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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22792369">The Quartermaster ||The Boyz &amp; LOONA</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromMyLibrary/pseuds/FromMyLibrary'>FromMyLibrary</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Genius Factory [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>LOONA (Korea Band), The Boyz (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AND I LOVE THEM FOR IT, Alternate Universe, And smart, Dark Academia, Drama, Drama &amp; Romance, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff and Crack, Hak deserves the world, I accidentally made Yves really hot and now i'm in love with her, I need one, Jacob is a saint, Juyeon is a dork, Kim Lip and Hak centered, Love Triangles, Love/Hate, M/M, Minor Violence, Prank Wars, Prank Wars!, Rare Pairings, Slice of Life, These kids are crazy, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, a bit of violence and swearing, also like i want a haseul in my life, and Juyeon is confusing, and like the overly supportive boys, and no one could ever tell me that this isn’t how kevin just acts, and now Yein from lovelyz, bear with me, can i have here please, crazy smart, good lord i could cry, haseul is some real girl crush material, heejin and hyunjin are little shits, how did we get from violence to romance angst, how do I emphasize a majority of this will just be creatively violent pranks, i am genuinely in love with the soft hearted warrior version of hak, i mean have you seen the girl, im now in love with Juhaknyeon, it kills me, it was inevitable, look it’s a weird group i get it, maybe it wasn't an accident, maybe she's just that hot, mentions of every idol i could add who are between the ages of 1997 and 1999, okay maybe i’m biased, or hyunjae, or jacob, secretssss</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 17:49:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>63,444</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22792369</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FromMyLibrary/pseuds/FromMyLibrary</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>We love Dark Academia in this house. </p><p>School Years 1999/2000, 1999, 1998, 1997. You don’t have to read Genius Factory to understand this but it does give a more expansive and in depth character of the school and the worldbuilding. </p><p>Before Taeyang graduates, he must find a replacement for the position of Quartermaster and turn over the reins of the auspicious legacy to a worthy student. Enter Jungeun and Haknyeon, the infamous rivals of the second year clandestine department, and the ensuing battle for the new QM has started.</p><p>(They just prank each other.)<br/>(There's a lot of aggressive hostility.)<br/>(That's war, I guess.)</p><p>Chapter 26 and now it's a romance drama so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Choi Chanhee | New/Ji Changmin | Q, Ju Haknyeon/Jung Yein, Lee Juyeon/Cho Haseul</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Genius Factory [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1638610</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>84</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Candidates</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The lobby of the government building sat virtually empty, each echo of a breathe falling out of the few resident’s lips tumbling through the air with heavy swirls. The first tints of the sun began to filter through the stained glass at the very peaks of the gothic windows, casting shadows and washes of warm reds and vibrant oranges onto the room beneath. There were approximately, and this number is not used lightly but rather in a statistically sound data assumption, 37 cans of empty, some crushed, assorted energy drink cans littering the oak floorboards and the Persian rugs. A stain had appeared under one of the chaise lounge chairs and was oddly yellow and black at the same time. It didn’t do too much damage to the wealthy room, adorned with fineries from across the globe and most probably acquired through less than legal means. </p><p>What did, however, prove to be a bit of an eyesore on the auspicious space were the four bodies in various states of undress and unkemptness dusting the floor and draped over the furniture. Bloodshot eyes, frazzled hair, and mouth caught falling into perpetual yawns were scattered across every face. One girl, whose legs had found themselves tucked under the back of a boy next to her, wore a streak of lipstick darting across her jawline in a soft rose color that mimicked the warm content tint of blush on her sleepy cheeks. </p><p>“Haseul,” the boy on top of her groaned, cracking his back as he rolled away from her bony toes which had previously been imprinting themselves into his poor spine. </p><p>A flurry of papers drifted off his stomach at the motion and landed on someone’s face. The other girl - who laid strewn across the floor in a tangle of limbs with her arms sticking beside her head at oddly bent angles and legs folded over discarded shoes, ties, and bookbags – muttered and swatted them away with her hands, nose and eyes scrunching at the sudden awakening. </p><p>“Jacob, stop…” she whined at the boy laid above her. </p><p>Haseul lifted her head, sitting up and tucking her legs back up to her chest and away from Jacob. The boy had his hand extended down the side of the sofa towards Yves on the floor and the two were swatting at each other, getting progressively more aggressive as they too awoke.  	</p><p>Taeyang’s groan resounded through the small dorm room. He laid upside down across the arms of a large leather chair in the lobby of the government building, back stretched over one arm and dipping over the side. His loafers fell onto the deep crimson carpet in a discarded jumble, his socked feet haphazardly hanging there in the air, kicking back and forth slowly. </p><p>Haseul eyed the boy with an indigent annoyance written across her face. “Do you need anything? Help? A lobotomy?” she yawned mis-question. “I know a guy.” </p><p>“No,” he sighed exaggeratedly. </p><p>“Dude seriously, what’s up?” Jacob asked, tucking away the frayed maps of gas and oil pipelines which traversed Eastern Europe that sat around his body, one having tucked itself into his the fold of his navy blazer against his wrinkled maroon polo. </p><p>“Just ignore me.” Taeyang continued to pout. </p><p>“Taeyang, you dipshit,” Yves interrupted, swatting Jacob’s hand with a loud smack that had him retreating into the sofa cushions. “Just tell us what’s wrong.” </p><p>“No, it’s fine” Taeyang lamented, back draped even further towards the ground as he melted in his sear. </p><p>“Oh my god, you’re such a drama queen,” Jacob huffed out. </p><p>“The lobotomy still stands. I could call Juyeon right now,” Haseul offered. “He owes me a favor.” </p><p>“I have to pick a new quartermaster before I graduate.” </p><p>“You haven’t done that already?” Yves asked surprised. </p><p>“No. we have like two months left. It’s fine. Besides I just really have to decide between Juhaknyeon and Jungeun.” </p><p>“I vote Jungeun,” Haseul threw in. “We haven’t had a girl in a while.” </p><p>A thoughtful expression dusted Yves’ features. “Yeah but Haknyeon would be a fun one.” </p><p>Jacob laughed. “Haknyeon? That kid’s straight up adorable.”  </p><p>“It’s a cover,” Taeyang corrected him monotonous tone drifting up from where his head neared the floor, hair dusting the wood, as he progressively slouched his body over the side of the seat in a passive apathy. </p><p>“Really? Damn, he’s good,” Jacob breathed out impressed. </p><p>“Maybe I should just make them battle to the death…” </p><p>“No!” Haseul and Jacob screamed. </p><p>“Why do either of you care?”</p><p>“Jungeun’s my baby,” Haseul pouted. </p><p>“Then you kill her! This is way too much work.” </p><p>“Who even made you the quartermaster?” Jacob asked. “I wasn’t friends with you before last year but damn you’re way too lazy to be QM.” </p><p>“I was initiated at the end of first year because I’m so damn special. Jongin thought I was a good replacement and what was I going to say no to the most legendary Clandestine man ever??” </p><p>Yves sighed and shook her head. “How did anyone ever think you were cool?” </p><p>“I still vote for Jungeun!” Haseul shouted. </p><p>“I vote for Haknyeon!” Jacob countered. </p><p>“I’m not, under any circumstances, helping any of you ever again.” </p><p>Taeyang finally collapsed onto the floor and rolled over with a grunt, eyeing Yves. “I’ll tell Younghoon you and Hyunjae lied about the Singapore thing your second year.” </p><p>“You can’t prove anything,” she bit back.  </p><p>“The AMK can.”</p><p>Yves narrowed her eyes.</p><p>“I thought we were supposed to be helping you pick a new QM?” Haseul inquired, stopping their battle of wills. </p><p>“Either of them is a good choice really,” Jacob interjected. </p><p>“I am too goddamn tired to worry about any of this right now,” Taeyang groaned again. “Did we finish the project before we passed out by any chance or are we stuck here for another couple hours?” he asked hopefully, upper body now smashed against the edge of the carpet and onto the floor. </p><p>“No, sorry,” Yves sighed. “Let’s hope this is an easy decision for you after the hell that is unsuccessful coup simulation.” </p><p>“You’ll be fine,” Haseul coaxed him. “They’re both good kids.” </p><p>It was not an official titled mandated by the Factory nor was it an easy one to possess. The job entailed being the school’s unofficial settlement quartermaster which meant every spat, despite, and disagreement big enough to effect the daily proceedings of the schools was to be settled by the age old Genius tradition of a knock-down, drag-out, blood-stained boxing match. And the QM monitored tensions, policed minor rows, facilitated settlement, and doled out punishment: a peacekeeper who used their fists more than their words and was a showman to boot. Of course, the ideal QM was level-headed, confident, quick on his feet and wits, and, well, a fucking good boxer. It was Taeyang’s hope that when he graduated he could pass it someone worthy, someone better than he had been. A clandestine kid who was smart and strong and fair. And somehow he ended up with what he thought were the two perfect, mature, competent candidates. Only a few stories up and a covered gangway over sat the two in question: the illustrious candidates for the school’s next Quartermaster position.</p><p>“You fucking liar!” Jungeun screamed, rocketing a knife across the room at Juhaknyeon head. </p><p>The boy ducked and rolled as the knife whizzed past him and clattered to the floor. He bounced back on his feet and vaulted under a desk as another came flying. “I didn’t take your stupid rope!”</p><p>“It’s laced with hyoscine and amobarbital, you idiot!” she shouted back. </p><p>Juhaknyeon head popped up from under the desk, ruffled hair sticking in every direction a shit eating grin on his face.<br/>
“Didn’t shell out the big bucks for BZ, huh?” </p><p>He ducked as Jungeun threw a chair which had been resting next to her across the room at him with a visceral wail. It bounced off the surface of the desk and crashed to the floor beside him with a loud smash. </p><p>“Just give it back, Hak!”</p><p>“How can I give it back if I don’t have it?” his voice teased. </p><p>“Why did I sign up for the joint clan-gov class?” Rocky mumbled to himself, standing in the corner with an utter exhaustion weighing down his shoulder. “Why did I have to put myself through this?” </p><p>“IM GOING TO CUT OUT YOUR FUCKING TONGUE AND FEED IT TO YOU!” Jungeun screamed as Haknyeon pinned her arms above her head, straddling the girl’s back. </p><p>Rocky hadn’t even seen either of them move, having just fished his phone out of his satchel and retrieved the contacts for Yein and Younghoon to come repossess the balls of chaotic disaster known as Jungeun and Juhaknyeon. Rocky let them pummel each other, watching as they rolled across the classroom with flying elbows and knees. </p><p>When Yein arrived with a smirk and a sway in her step, nonchalantly waltzing through the door, Rocky wasn’t sure he had made the right decision on who to control an angrily hyper Jungeun. Sure, he had seen the girl in a much worse state but the sparkle of mischief in Yein’s eye was not settling his doubts. She made her way to Rocky’s side and raised her eyebrow at the two wrestling on the ground. </p><p>“I had no idea he was that cute,” she said to Rocky. “Honestly, how can she fight him? He looks adorable.” </p><p>Jungeun groaned from the floor as Haknyeon slammed the side of her head against his knee. “It’s a cover, goddammit!” she screamed. </p><p>“Wow, he must be a prodigy or something,” Yein added appraisingly. “Never would have guessed someone that cute could draw that much blood.” </p><p>“It’s the whole goddamn clandestine department,” Rocky sighed. “They’re all like this.” He then looked over toYein questioningly “Aren’t you friends with San?” </p><p>“I’m closer with Yeosang but yeah. Difference is I know the extent of San’s capabilities quite well.”  </p><p>Rocky just muttered something in response she didn’t quite catch before walking over and pulling Haknyeon off of Jungeun. </p><p>“Mom’s here,” he told Jungeun, walking the boy he was holding out of her way. </p><p>“Hand?” Yein asked, extending hers to girl who lay on the floor with a black eye forming and a busted lip. </p><p>Jungeun accepted it and the two were gone in seconds, leaving an exhausted Rocky to throw Juhaknyeon body toward the wall. </p><p>“Pick up your stuff, the twins are coming,” he muttered, slipping on the peacoat he had draped over the back of his chair and shuffling out of the room to his next class, for which he was regrettably late. </p><p>Younghoon’s head popped through the door followed by Hyunjae’s smiling face. </p><p>“You got into another fight with Jungeun?” Younghoon asked disappointedly. </p><p>“Yeah but… did he win?” Hyunjae chirped, eyes excitedly narrowing in on Haknyeon’s bloody knuckles. </p><p>Younghoon merely exhaled a breathe of vexation and grabbed Haknyeon’s bruised arm, hauling him out of the room with a cheerful Hyunjae in tow.  </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. With A Little Help From My Friends</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“And then they literally set off a rocket propulsion in Guam that I have NO IDEA how the heck they attained,” Sunwoo ranted. “They showed me the explosion on this little…” he trailed off the mimic the size of an oddly shaped object no larger than the size of a loaf of bread before continuing. “I wanna call it a remote monitoring device?” </p><p>“You think you have it bad, kid?” Haknyeon whined back, voice slightly muffled as he held the end of a string (which he had been using to sew a small laceration together) in his teeth and a needle in his other hand. </p><p>They were seated in the communal hall, Sunwoo and the other first years often frequenting it out of fear the upper classmen had rigged the respective department libraries and lounges. A few students mingled around, lazily shuffling their way through the tables and chairs, around lamps and end tables, over carpets and shag rugs. Haknyeon has sure he saw a familiar fluff of a certain assassin in training’s hair as he scurried out the entrance alongside the most destructive first year the school had ever seen, which was, of course, one of the people who had caused Sunwoo such great pain in his months at the Factory. They were an odd bunch: the first year class that year. </p><p>“You know what, yes. Yes, I do. Jungeun is a pain. Ok? I get it. I really do,” Sunwoo agreed, shooting Haknyeon a sympathetic look. </p><p>Juhaknyeon, in response, raised his arms in the air as if he was a wrongfully convicted man finally being pardoned from the burden of misinformation and a gullible courthouse. He certainly felt that was the case and Jungeun was, in this scenario, the judge, jury, and executioner who had landed him the unjust grips of a sentence. </p><p>Sunwoo breathed an air-full into his lungs before continuing. “But these three psycho first years in my intro cyber/engineering track are driving me insane.” </p><p>“Is this the Inventors of Doomsday course?”</p><p>“Yeah, the one with Dr. Losima. Why?”</p><p>“Oh nothing. Just one of Taeyang’s friends in that course.” </p><p>Sunwoo threw Juhaknyeon an indigent expression across the piles of books and binders sitting open between them. “So?” </p><p>“So. Maybe you could ask him to put a good word in for me with the reining QM? I mean I am practically family.” </p><p>Sunwoo huffed and gave the elder boy unimpressed face. “What’s his name?”</p><p>“Hwiyoung.” </p><p>“HE’S ONE OF THE CRAZY ONES!” Sunwoo exploded. “Nope. There is no way you could ever get me to talk to one of those freaks. I’m through with them. Done.” </p><p>“Come one please…” Haknyeon drew out the plea. </p><p>“I’m just gonna go lay on top of Younghoon for a while,” Sunwoo shook his head and began to stand. </p><p>“You’re really going to leave your poor best friend all alone?” he pouted. </p><p>Sunwoo levelled the elder with narrowed eyes and pursed lip. “Please leave me alone. I am but a weary child with tired bones… and I’m fed up with your bullshit,” he added at the last second before he excused himself. </p><p>How on earth was Haknyeon going to entice, bribe, and/or blackmail the QM position away from Jungeun and into his own hands? It seemed an almost impossible feat. Of course, Hakneyon knew he was a good candidate but the women in the clandestine department, particular Jungeun, had an amazing method to get their own way. He had seen Yves in action and the girl was terrifying. Maybe it was all the clandestine women at Genius, but Hakneyon had convinced himself that in order to attain the position his mother held when she attended, the same title his uncle had gone by and the illustrious legacy his grandfather took part in, he needed a particularly cunning strategy beyond that of classroom tiffs. It was a family legacy and there was nothing more dangerous at the Factory than familial pride. It had destroyed entire countries, small and mostly unknown to the world, which then faded into the obscurity of a wide breathed world history. It had toppled governments and companies, broken marriages and bones, and worse of all, family legacy is what founded the Genius Factory in the first place. Pride wasn’t a sin for nothing. </p><p>Haknyeon meandered his way around the now thinning throngs of first year dusted about the common room, having been left high and dry by Sunwoo and in need of a certainly inclined person by which to guide him through his next series of exploits. And before a thought of secondhand nature had entered his mind, two boys entered his vision. </p><p>“Just the two I was looking for,” Haknyeon smirked as he approached the backs of the two underclassmen seated under the large portrait of Filo Castro which hung on the wall. </p><p>Eric and Hwall spun around at the sound of the familiar voice and exchanged an anxious glance at realization of just who exactly it was. </p><p>“I need you,” he pointed at Hwall, “to so graciously lend me your knowledge of the engineering building.” “And you,” he pointed at Eric,” to loan me your free manual labour and unwavering moral support.” </p><p>The two boys glanced at each other again before looking back to the suspiciously, and quite frankly dangerously, energetic Juhaknyeon. </p><p>“Ok. Why?” Hwall asked him. </p><p>“You don’t need to know why. You just have to help me.”</p><p>“Have to?” Eric mimed the words back at the second year. </p><p>Hakneyon nodded his head, grabbed both of them by their biceps, and was hauling them out the door before they could protest. </p><p>“The key’s probably under the one of the canisters. Just give me a second,” Hwall muttered as they stood outside the large industrial sized hanger door at the back of the engineering complex. </p><p>“Why do we have to go in this way?” Eric inquired with a slight tilt of his head towards the towering corrugated steel panels and the small chained door which sat beside them. </p><p>“Hak said it was ‘more clandestine’,” Hwall mocked with air quotes. “Besides, it’s after hours. They already locked up.” </p><p>Eric shrugged and began looking around the canisters littering the dead grass among debris and burn scars upon the earth. He kicked over a discarded metal jug with his shoe, only to notice it had previously contained turpentine once it tipped onto its side. Hwall muttered angrily as he worked his way through the rusty objects, throwing them carelessly as he checked each. They both startled as a loud smash filled their ears, jarring them away from their search of the ground and towards a large gaping hole which sat in the glass window above the door. They looked over to Juhaknyeon and saw he grinning proudly. </p><p>“That works too,” Eric shrugged. </p><p>Hwall narrowed his eyes and looked at the elder with puzzled amazement. “How has Clandestine not kicked you out yet?”</p><p>Haknyeon fake laughed in response before stilling his features and eyeing the younger. “I’m the best damn cover in the entire department, kid.” </p><p>“You can’t call someone who’s taller than you, kid,” Hwall remarked. </p><p>“There is no way you’re taller than me!” Haknyeon all but screeched. </p><p>“Dude,” Eric interrupted. “He’s always been taller than you.” </p><p>Haknyeon scoffed and turned back towards the hole in the window. “Well, come on now,” he waved them after him as he shimming up the side of the wall towards the opening.<br/>
Hwall and Eric watched from beneath as Juhaknyeon scaled the wall beside the door, inserting his feet into the small incisions of the stone wall which had crumbled away in the process of aging and flinched as his arm tore along the sharp glass peaks sticking into the minimally size hole he had created only moments prior. A deep red line of blood arose and dripped down his right bicep as he finagled his figure through the opening before dropping down into the room inside. Hwall followed, only slightly scratching his shoulder as he ducked inside, his large figure hunkering over as he shimmied past the glass. Eric brought up the rear, stumbling a bit as he landed heavily beside them in the back of the dark engineering hanger.<br/>
Their feet echoed as they walked through the large open space, their footfalls resounding off the tall, cavernous ceilings and amplified into the space around the three boys. </p><p>“Why are we here again?” Eric asked, looking around the shadowy room, barely making out any of the shapes in the blackened hanger. "We're not blowing up the reactor, are we? Because I heard that didn't go so well last time." </p><p>“Because I need help,” Haknyeon simply answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. </p><p>Hwall looked thoroughly unamused at that answer. “No really. Why are we here?” </p><p>“Because I’m your friend and you love me?”</p><p>“I think we all know that’s not why,” Hwall responded dryly. </p><p>“I don’t think you’ve ever had a good idea and I’ve only known you for like 5 months,” Eric muttered. </p><p>Haknyeon looked over at him offended and surprised. “Excuse you. I have good ideas all the time,” he defended. </p><p>“Does he?” Eric asked Hwall who shook his head, leading the boy to gesture back at Juhaknyeon as if to say ‘See? We both know you’re an idiot.’ </p><p>“Well, this one is a good idea.”</p><p>“And who’s the authority on that? You?” Hwall teased the elder. </p><p>Juhaknyeon put his hand on his hips, which neither of the two younger boys could see in the dark. “Let’s see if you two are this bold when I’m the Quartermaster.” </p><p>Hwall burst out laughing, reaching over to grab Eric to steady himself. Eric widened his eyes and snorted, attempting to stifle his giggle. </p><p>“Dude,” Hwall choked out. “You? Quartermaster? Impossible.” </p><p>“Yeah, it’s unlikely,” Eric shrugged. </p><p>“Are you going to help me or not? I just need to know where Hwiyoung works and then you can leave.” </p><p>“Hwiyoung? The first year in my bio-weapon class? The one Sunwoo always rants about? Why do you need to know where he works?” Hwall asked. </p><p>Haknyeon sighed and mumbled something in response. </p><p>“Sorry what was that?” Hwall leaned toward him. </p><p>“Because he’s friends with Taeyang,” Juhaknyeon repeated loader. </p><p>Eric facepalmed with an audible smack and Hwall looked like he was about to rip off their elder’s friend’s head. </p><p>“And what exactly are going to do to the poor kid?” Eric inquired, slightly terrified for the aforementioned boy. </p><p>Haknyeon waved them off, pulling a sealed envelope out from the back of his waistband. “Just tell me which work bench is his.” </p><p>Hwall said nothing but pointed toward the open dark void. “Last one on the left. Second row.” </p><p>As soon as Juhaknyeon had made it to the desk and was taping the letter to the top of the station upon the wood, the storage closet door slammed open and two bodies tumbled into the room, laughing. Light escaped through the door behind them, pouring into the void with shafts of a faint blue light streaming across the concrete and illuminating the three shocked boys now paused throughout the space. </p><p>“What are you doing in here?!”  the girl screamed. </p><p>“Jinsoul?” Eric asked, having seen the fourth year econ student often in the government library with her friends. </p><p>“What are you doing in here?!” Haknyeon parroted back at her.  </p><p>“You’re not even an engineering major, dude,” the boy chided Hakneyon. “I don’t think you have a right to ask that.” </p><p>“Eric?” Jinsoul responded to the younger boy, the two of them locking gazes in puzzlement. </p><p>“Kang, man, you’re not supposed to be here,” Hakneyon waved his finger in the other’s face. </p><p>“Like hell I’m not supposed to be here,” Kanghyun yelled back, approaching the younger boy. “I’m part of the fucking department. You’re not supposed to be here!” </p><p>Haknyeon shrugged indignantly. “Who’s to say?”</p><p>“Me!” Kanghyun answered exasperated. “I’m to say!” </p><p>“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend…” Eric mumbled under his breath still staring at Jinsoul with a comedically caught off guard expression. </p><p>The girl blushed in return. “We’re not dating,” she emphasized sheepishly. </p><p>Kanghyun turned around to her confused. “We’re not?”</p><p>Jinsoul looked over at her late night escapade partner with a raised eyebrow. “I don’t know. Are we?”</p><p>“I certainly thought we were dating,” he answered. “I mean, not unless you don’t want to be dating,” he quickly tacked on the end. </p><p>Haknyeon now stood silently beside them, listening intently as they revealed in such an intimately vulnerable moment. He coo and looked over at the younger boys to smile in appreciation for the couple but Hwall and Eric frantically motioned toward the door once they caught his attention. </p><p>“I see you!” Kanghyun called out when they had made it half-way toward the back gate. </p><p>Twenty minutes later and Hakneyon was wishing Kanghyun had killed him back in the empty hanger. He was wishing he had met half a dozen different ends than the one which he endured now. How was he supposed to know Jinsoul had Jacob’s phone number from a cross-discipline class their second year. </p><p>“Why the hell did you break into the engineering department?!” Jacob yelled as the three boys were deposited at his feet.</p><p>He well knew who the ring-leader was and refused to break a lethal eye contact with said boy. However, the only two boys shivering under the cold gaze were the two gullible first years Jacob was sure had little to nothing to do in the matter besides be mesmerized and thoroughly persuaded by a blithering idiot of a clandestine major. Jacob wasn’t even sure Hakneyon really knew what his major entailed seeing as tow the failing catastrophe of a break-in which had just occurred. </p><p>Haknyeon’s face twisted into a defensive anger. “Because you wont vouch for me with Taeyang!” he shouted back at equal volume. </p><p>“This is exactly the type of impulse thing you do which is the reason why I don’t want to! You’re irresponsible and this isn’t a goddamn joke.” </p><p>“God, I miss Sangyeon!” Juhaknyeon taunted. “He was a lot cooler than you!” </p><p>Jacob groaned frustratedly in response, a loud visceral sound escaping his chest. “Sangyeon would have beat your ass and you know it!” </p><p>While they fought, Hwall, who had escaped the berating of their fourth year friend, had somehow slowly, very slowly, slipping back out of the room and into the hall, closing to the door to a litany of obscenities and phrases about betrayal Eric mouthed at him. The others which had been unceremoniously ripped from their beds, sat slumped around with drooping eyes and languid movements. Jacob’s roommate, a third year government major named Kevin, was high fiving a sheepish looking Eric who was visibly surprised as to why he was being commended instead of chastised at the present moment. On the small sofa which sat nestled under the window lined with empty wine bottles and bullet shells, three boys smushed onto the cramped cushions. Chanhee and Changmin had been ripped from their room across the hall and Juyeon had, unfortunately, picked up his phone when Kanghyun called. </p><p>“Why is Hyunjae not helping?” Juyeon asked the roommates cuddled on either side of him, their heads resting sleeping on his shoulders, bracketing his body in a comfortable warm embrace. </p><p>Changmin maneuvered his head to look at Juyeon and muttered, “Would you be here if you had a choice?”</p><p>“Fair enough,” Juyeon answered and Changmin was once again drifting off to sleep on his shoulder in the midst of all the chaos a dorm room could possibly hold. </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. A Friend is A Friend Indeed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Where do you think you’re going?”</p><p>Chanhee whipped around and saw Younghoon standing there with his arms crossed and a stern look. “Uh, to the common room?”</p><p>“No, you’re not. You have to work on your project,” Younghoon corrected the younger boy. </p><p>“Oh come on,” Chanhee stamped his foot down. “it’s not due until tomorrow and I’m basically done.”</p><p>“Then it won’t take you that long to finish it,” Younghoon teased. “Project now. You’re coming with me. We’ll suffer together.”</p><p>Chanhee stumbled involuntarily after Younghoon, grumbling and lamenting the entire way to the computer lab. The younger cyber student didn’t start working until after Younghoon threw him a chocolate bar a good five minutes following their entrance. They both startled as the light from the hallway suddenly entered the space. </p><p>Changmin ran forward and plopped himself down on Chanhee’s lap and begun to mess around the other’s computer as the boy simply sat there and let him. Hwall strolled in behind the elder Engineering student and took up resident leaning against Younghoon’s desk, arms and ankles crossed, his phone in his hand joined by a flurry of his fingers as they passed quickly over the screen.  </p><p>“And what are you two doing here?” Younghoon asked, not looking up at them or halting in his keying. </p><p>“I don’t know, bored I guess,” Hwall shrugged. </p><p>“This is why I never get any work done,” he sighed, earning an irritated look from Chanhee whose lap and workstation were still taken up but an overly enthusiastic Changmin, unmoved by the slight jabs Chanhee poked into his side incessantly. </p><p>“Someone ‘accidentally’ spilled a bunch of methylmercury into the humidifier,” Changmin waved them off as if he was discussing a small ceiling leak. “They’re just afraid we’ll get Minamata disease or something.” </p><p>“Why did you put air quotes around accidentally?” Chanhee asked, stopping his torment of the boy’s ribcage. </p><p>“Why do you guys have a humidifier?” Younghoon joined him, finally glancing up at the two newcomers. </p><p>“Do you guys know how to properly store hazardous and flammable chemicals?” Hwall asked them. </p><p>The two cyber students shook their heads. </p><p>“Honestly I don’t think the school knows how to either,” he shrugged. “They just thought it might help with the explosions issue.” </p><p>“That is so reassuring,” Younghoon responded deadpan. </p><p>“And your…” Hwall leaned over to inspect the other’s screen for a second before continuing, “three gorges failsafe mechanism attack is?” </p><p>“That’s what you’re doing?” Changmin balked in amazement before chirping out an exceptionally loud “Cool!” </p><p>Chanhee took advantage of Changmin’s distracted state and roughly pushed the other boy off of him, folding his legs up under his body to take up the entirety of the seat. Changmin pouted from the floor but made no effort to sit up or to fight back. </p><p>Younghoon groaned. “It is what I would be doing if you two didn’t come in and start chatting like a couple of hyenas.” </p><p>“Come on where else were we supposed to go?” Hwall carped. </p><p>“I don’t know. The government building?” </p><p>“With Jacob? And he wouldn’t have thrown me right out after last night? You honestly think that was a better option?” he catechized. </p><p>“I. Don’t. Care,” Younghoon answered.  </p><p>“You guys have a pretty cool ceiling. I never noticed it before,” Changmin mumbled up from the floor. </p><p>“We what?” Chanhee asked, tearing his face away from his screen and craning his head to look in the direction of Changmin’s gaze. </p><p>“Maybe I should spend more time in here,” Changmin added thoughtfully. </p><p>“No!” Younghoon and Chanhee yelled back simultaneously. </p><p>A suspicious smile emerged on Hwall’s face as he leaned into Younghoon’s space and whispered out, “I’m going to visit you every day.” </p><p>The utter look of terror which passed over Younghoon’s face was hilarious and Hwall and had him snickering with glee. Changmin and Chanhee were both silently gazing at the ceiling, both, for the first time, having realized the intricacies of the patterned cooper tiles were quite beautiful when they caught the light in a certain way. </p><p>“This school has too much money,” Chanhee mused. </p><p>“Yeah. Yeah it really does,” Changmin echoed, transfixed by the utterly pointless and superfluous grandeur of the computer lab’s furnishings which he highly doubted any of them had ever seen let alone cared about. </p><p>--- </p><p>In a small white room on the end of the medical wing reserved for group study and collaboration, Juyeon sat, similarly, desperately attempting to prevent Heejin and Hyunjin from distracting each other as he tutored them for their intro medicine class: The Fragility of the Human Body. It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be there, but also, what self-respecting third year would actually want to be in a alarming bright room with two first year girls giggling over a boy in their class. It didn’t help that said boy just so happened to be his friend and general conceited pain in the ass, Heo HyunJoon, better knwon as Hwall. No, Juyeon was here overhearing snickers about Hwall’s abs on his free Monday afternoon because Haseul and Jacob asked him to be there. And was Jacob was his friend, his good friend, but also maybe he was here enduring it all because he was a little in love with Haseul. </p><p>“And did you see the way his shirt rode up when he stretched his arms?” Heejin asked with a tilt of her eyebrow and a suggestive smirk.</p><p>“Heejin!” Hyunjin yelped and smacked the shameless girl on the arm. </p><p>“I really couldn’t possibly care less about that idiot. Could you two please focus,” Juyeon sighed. </p><p>“Oh, right. You’re friends with him, aren’t you?” Heejin clamored forward over the table, showing more interest than she had all afternoon. </p><p>“That’s one way to put it,” he huffed. </p><p>“So does that mean you have his phone number?” Hyunjin asked, also leaning toward the elder boy in excitement. </p><p>“Yes. Why?”</p><p>The two girls erupted into squeals which tortured his ears. </p><p>“Can you give it to us?!” Heejin yelled. </p><p>“Please, please, please,” Hyunjin joined, jutting out her lip in a full pout. </p><p>“If you pay attention and actually let me tutor you,” he started to say and watched as the two girls leaned impossibly closer, ears open and intent. “I’ll give you his phone number,” he finished. </p><p>They erupted into gleeful cheers, high fiving and laughing. </p><p>“But you know that means you have to work, right?”</p><p>They nodded in response, two big innocent smiles stretching across their faces. </p><p>“Look, to tell you the truth, I only made it through that class cause I copied off the kid sitting next to me,” Juyeon confessed. “And when I spilled all my beakers over I blamed it on him every time.” </p><p>“But you’re boring!” Heejin whined. “You’re only saying that to make us feel better because we pay more attention to Hwall than the teacher.” </p><p>“Yeah,” Hyunjin parroted. “You’re so serious all the time. There’s no way.” </p><p>“You think I’m serious?” he asked surprised. </p><p>“You always have such a thoughtful expression on your face and you’re pretty quiet.”</p><p>“That’s because I have no idea what’s going on most of the time!” Juyeon laughed. “Is that what people think of me? Because that’s kind of awesome.” </p><p>“Oh no,” Hyunjin breathed out staring at the laughing boy in front of them. “He’s funny,” she whispered in amazement to Heejin. </p><p>“So you’re really not some super genius, super stuffy medical student Haseul talks about?” Heejin asked. “She told us to be careful we didn’t annoy you.” </p><p>Juyeon’s eyes widened and he perked up. “She talks about me!? What does she say? Does she like me?” </p><p>“You’re worse than us!” Heejin giggled. </p><p>“Hey, I have a proposition,” Hyunjin interrupted causing the other two to face her. “What about we just,” she motioned in a crossing motion with her hands, “swap phone numbers?” </p><p>“Oh my god, you’re a genius,” Juyeon muttered, holding his hands out clasped together in a praying motion. </p><p>“Who would have thought he’d be a massive dork?” Heejin snorted. </p><p>“Just to clarify,” Juyeon stopped them before they started studying. “People actually think I’m cool?”</p><p>“Not anymore,” Heejin mumbled under her breathe. </p><p>“Don’t worry, you’re secret is safe with us,” Hyunjin winked. </p><p>“You two are my new favorite first years.” </p><p>“Hey, I didn’t say it was for free,” Hyunjin halted him. “You owe us now.” </p><p>Juyeon flinched and looked offendedly at the audacious girl. “I’m already tutoring you!”</p><p>“Not doing a very good job of it,” Heejin threw in. </p><p>“NEITHER OF YOU ARE PAYING ATTENTION!” </p><p>“Not our fault,” Hyunjin defended. </p><p>“Yes!” Juyeon frantically nodded his head. “Yes it is!”</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Assembly Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The economics department at Genius is infamous. Of course, the mortality rate for engineering had gone up exponentially due to a fluke reaction at the beginning of the year and they now boasted the highest numbers in the fatality stats.  But that was an accident, <em> wholly unintentional </em>. There were at least 12 out of 70 kids left. That didn’t count for nothing. No, it was the consistency of the bloodbath that second year economics possessed. It bonded them, some said, in a way indescribable to other departments who toiled away in their little isolated bubbles. The economics syndicates which emerged from the tragic cloister of challenge and horror were some the most loyal groups one could find at a place like Genius, where the kids quite often thrived on betrayal and moral subversion. And of course one could not talk about the econ department without talking about the school’s underground smuggling ring. ‘Underground’ here being used in the most liberal sense of the word both in its infamy and in its free capitalistic intentions. </p><p>And perhaps no one really knew why the entirety of the third and fourth year economic department was gathered that day outside the towering thick oak of the board meeting doors. It wasn’t the season for insider trading monopoly or stock fall roulette and it most certainly couldn’t be covering the Christmas mega-corporation secret Santa. Was it May already and time for resurrecting dead currency to emerge at private auctions? One of the wonderful things about Genius was that quite often the kids didn’t even know the subjects of the meetings even after attending them.<br/>
The difficulty of raising voluntary support for public functions was rampant and the teachers exhausted. </p><p>Amongst the congregation of tartan and argyle, there was rumor emerged that a dissertation required a sort of sweat-shop mobilization of their masses in printing re-circulated notes from the, well, that was where it got a little fuzzy. Some said post-war Japan, some insisted the height of tsarist Russia, and other still argued tooth and nail they heard it was Canadian money with Mercaptoethanol laced into its scratch and sniff capability. Kevin was almost positive the last was a result of Eric and Sunwoo. He didn’t know how but it had their names written all over it. And yes, It absolutely was to spite him and Jacob. </p><p>Kevin, being ever the punctual man and responsible man he was, propelled through the doors at the very last second, closely followed by Moonbin and Kino who were also of course just as conscientious, and smushed himself in between Vernon and Minchan. His fellow late comers, unbothered by their sudden load and every apparent entrance scrambled over at least three of their comrades before settling on either side of Jinsoul and Hyunjae. </p><p>Moonbin’s form of greeting was to cling his entire arm around Jinsoul’s defenseless figure while beaming happily with the exhale of, “Mom! I missed you!” as Kino walloped an oblivious Hyunjae’s shoulder with a “Dad?! Is that you?” The former received the action with a begrudging smile, waving off the annoyed expressions surrounding them and the latter crumbled into an embarrassed heap of boy as Kino continued to torment him. Kevin slid deep into his seat with a sigh, back sloping into the shape of the chair with a languid curve.</p><p>“Why are they like this?” he murmured to one in particular. </p><p>Turning to each side he was greeted first with a frazzled Minchan, hair askew and clothes crooked, which was, on the whole, not surprising in the least. He was then met with Vernon on his right, stoic statue of an expression etched onto his face like marble, gaze hard and vacant beneath of pair of ostentatiously red sunglasses. Vernon directed a cur and solemn nod to him in response. </p><p>“What is he-” Kevin started to ask before Minchan answered. </p><p>“He has a bet with someone and he’s not allowed to smile all day.”</p><p>“Okay, but what kind of lame ass bet is that?”</p><p>Minchan shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t make it.”</p><p>In the next beat Moonbin’s very disastrously concealed whisper, which hardly deserved the classification of whisper at all, erupted from their friends before them. The boy was perched toward Jinsoul’s ear, hand cupping his face as he directed his voice at her in the most unsubtle manner. </p><p>“I brought you a present,” the voice hissed. “It’s me. I’m the present.” </p><p>Moonbin’s gleeful confession was met with a straight faced Jinsoul and Kevin’s outrageous outburst of “Why didn’t I get a present?!”, his attention having been taken away from the enthralling enigma that was Vernon’s impulse control</p><p>Moonbin smiled softly toward the unimpressed Jinsoul and added, “I also brought you the printing mechanics for the Bank of Manchou notes you wanted because I’m the perfect child.” </p><p>“Yay!” </p><p>Hyunjae groaned from beside the clapping girl. “I don’t want to touch that one but I also viscerally need to know why.” </p><p>The only response he received was Jinsoul and Moonbin simultaneously sticking their tongues out at him. </p><p>“It’s okay you have me,” Kino teased. </p><p>Hyunjae turned back to the younger with rolled eyes. “And they say romance isn’t dead.”</p><p>Minchan leaned forward and rested his arms on the back of Kino’s chair. “I thought you told me this morning that love was fake and all relationships were pointless and flawed.” </p><p>“And?”</p><p>“I didn’t say I disagreed.” </p><p>“Ew Virgos,” Jinsoul scoffed softly.</p><p>Minchan and Hyunjae both faced her in a silent swivel with a look of equal confusion and offense on their faced. </p><p>“You’re all emotionally constipated,” she explained. </p><p>“You don’t actually believe in astrology do you?” Kino asked.</p><p>“Oh shut up, you. You’re a fucking Aquarius.” </p><p>“Wait, but I’m an Aquarius,” Moonbin pouted. </p><p>“I said what I said” 		</p><p>“I thought you liked me?” he whined. “I thought I was your favorite son? </p><p>After a beat and a glance over her shoulder at Minchan, Kevin, and Vernon seated behind them she turned back to Moonbin and replied, “Kevin is the only good one.”</p><p>“Is it because of my astrology sign?” Kevin asked with a raised eyebrow.</p><p>“No,” Jinsoul smiled. “It’s because you’re the shortest.” </p><p>Vernon doubled over in hysterical laughter which caused Minchan to desperately clamber over Kevin in an attempt to stop the boy from losing his bet. Not a single one of them had any idea why Minchan was so invested but he certainly seemed to be treating the other boy’s reaction as a life or death situation which it very well may have been. </p><p>“Wait, but I haven’t even done anything to deserve this!” Kevin defended himself. “I just sat here! I sat here in silence!” </p><p>“Can we get a new mom, please?” Kino asked Hyunjae. </p><p>“Can we get a taller mom?” Kevin asked, glaring directly into Jinsoul’s eyes. </p><p>“Why’d you even marry her?” Kino probed Hyunjae again, causing the elder to get red in the face and bury it in his hands. </p><p>“I’m the only one that would take him,” Jinsoul responded with an affectionate pat on her friend’s leg. </p><p>“Wait so am I the favorite child now?” Kevin continued. “I don’t know if I want that?” </p><p>“If you didn’t have a choice in the first place what makes you think you have a choice now?” Minchan deadpanned. </p><p>Vernon finally overcame his hysteria at his favorite pastime of Jinsoul ribbing Kevin like the supportive friend she was and turned to her with a genuinely interested question. “Wait when did you get so into astrology? And how do you know my birthday?” </p><p>“Can we just exist in peace for one?” Hyunjae sighed. “One day? I have no idea why this is meeting is even necessary but I would like to get through it please.” </p><p>“I think it was something about the second year’s needing a morale boost?” Kino offered with a shrug. </p><p>“Then clearly Jinsoul doesn’t need to be here,” Moonbin bit out, his deep set pout having permanently taken up residence on his face as he saw as far away from Jinsoul as possible in their squished proximity. </p><p>“Oh, come here you big baby,” she gripped, reaching out from him as he cowered away. </p><p>“No. I like dad now.” </p><p>“Did you not like me before?” Hyunjae asked confused. </p><p>“I thought I was your favourite?” Kino leaned into Hyunjae’s face with a pout to mirror Moonbin’s. </p><p>Vernon almost from his seat as he attempted to grab Jinsoul’s shoulder across the space. “WHO TOLD YOU MY BIRTHDAY?!” he demanded. </p><p>“I’m too young to be a father,” Hyunjae fake cried into the void of chatting students all waiting to finally figure out what on earth they all were exactly doing there at 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon. </p><p>“I am going to eviscerate myself,” Kevin slumped into his seat. </p><p>“You’d disappoint Jacob,” Kino threw over his shoulder. </p><p>“No,” Kevin whined. “Not Jacob.”</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Healing a Broken Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Whatever they were supposed to be learning in Clandestine that day, well Rocky didn’t know. He often missed the point of even going to class these days when he was stuck between the department’s resident feud. No, of course competition was not a bad thing. It was encouraged. But this, this wasn’t competition. Rocky was convinced his two friends would murder each other without a second’s hesitation, and premeditated murder was not on the docket of school sanctioned extracurricular. Accidents happened, but if one of these two went missing, the school wouldn’t even  have to conduct an investigation. Life was hard being the Switzerland of the clandestine department, but never ask Rocky how he arrived at this place smack dab in the no man’s land of the Hak-Kim war. </p><p>‘Two-faced twat,’ Jungeun mouthed at Haknyeon. </p><p>The other wasn’t even writing notes anymore, pen long been put down on top of three sentences at best scribbled down from the first half hour of their lecture on… something or other related to media securitization and garnering perpetrator sympathy. </p><p>‘Hell cat,’ he overly articulated back. </p><p>‘Douche canoe.’</p><p>‘Moron.’ </p><p>“Honestly,” Rocky whisper yelled in interruption, throwing down his own pen – not like he was even able to focus anyway with the viciously fueled waves coming from either side. “Did you not here about what happened Kino and Vernon yesterday at the econ meeting?” he asked eyeing each of them. “Shut up.” </p><p>“No what happened?” Hak responded quietly eyes softening as they met Rocky’s face, moving from the glaring battle he had been engaged with Jungeun in. </p><p>“I didn’t even start it,” Jungeun bit out. “Hak did.” </p><p>“No way,” Hak sputtered, turning back to her. “I wouldn’t have called you an incompetent, sadistic leech if you didn’t glare at me the second I sat down!”	</p><p>“And I wouldn’t have glared at you if you hadn’t tripped me on my way to the dinning hall this morning!” she threw back. </p><p>“It’s not like it was on purpose,” he grumbled, hands smacked down on the table to lean across Rocky toward her. “But now I wish it was.”</p><p>Jungeun leaned in to meet him with a poisonous gaze. “You fucking prick.” </p><p>“Is that really the best insult you can come up with Kim?” </p><p>“Why would I waste any of my effort for you? Unlike you, I don’t sit around thinking of ways to insult you all day instead of studying.” </p><p>“You’re just saying that because I’ve been ranked above you since the start of the year and you can’t handle losing.” </p><p>“Does some idiot like you really think Taeyang would pick you to be the next quartermaster?” Jungeun taunted back with a haughty smirk. “You can’t do anything right, you disappointment. <br/>You’re just a legacy fuck-up.” </p><p>Haknyeon’s lip trembled slightly and his eyes immediately hardened, jaw tense. Rocky knew that was a low blow. Hell, even Jungeun knew that was a low blow. </p><p>“Hi, yes,” Rocky waved his hand between them cutting off the tense breath they shared. “Can I remind you too I am still right here?” Rocky huffed indignantly. </p><p>“Rocky! Are you talking in my class?” the teacher called out all of a sudden, back swiveling from the projector to face them. </p><p>“Sir?” Rocky raised his hand. “Can I move seats?” </p><p>“You’re talking during my class, and let me remind you that you’re second year clandestine students and I really should not have been able to catch you, and you want to move seats now?”	</p><p>Rocky stared back at the professor for a moment. “Yes.” </p><p>“Then who is going to stop those two?” He inquired, finger outstretched and pointing at the trio where they sat. </p><p>Rocky sighed and sunk lower into his seat, submitting to their professor insistence that the two best students, although rowdy and unpredictable, were best reigned by the hands of their mutual friend. Honestly, they should start considering Rocky for the QM position. What kind of fucking quartermaster candidates needed their own therapist? This is why they never had two options before. Taeyang had really messed up with his whole prolonged announcement. And no one bore the brunt of his indecisiveness more than Rocky. </p><p>Haknyeon sought Hyunjae out after class. For all the bravado and confidence of Genius kids, they were in fact still kids. He ran into Jacob on the gangway between Government and Clandestine, leaning against the wall chatting with Haseul. </p><p>“Hey Jacob,” he called out. </p><p>Haseul looked up and waved goodbye as Hak approached, the boy gesturing a tiny wave back as she walked off. Jacob turned to him with a smile that almost made Hak feel better. Almost. </p><p>“Have you seen Hyunjae?” he asked. </p><p>“I think he was with Jinsoul in the econ lobby,” Jacob responded. “Why?” </p><p>“Ah, nothing.” </p><p>“Hey” Jacob reached out to stop him, lightly grabbing his forearm with a concerned look. “You alright? You know you can talk to me right?” </p><p>Haknyeon smiled softly, before the corners of his lips dropped again. “Yeah. I know.” </p><p>Jacob raised an eyebrow, both of them completely aware it was not exactly a lie and not exactly the truth either. He didn’t say anything to this extent. Jacob already knew Hak would have to grow in time to trust him and maybe share that little bit he had already opened up to Hyunjae. If Jacob had learned one thing at Genius it was that you can’t make someone trust, but you can be there for them when they are ready. </p><p>“Thanks, Jacob,” Hak muttered after a second and then he went off to find Hyunjae. </p><p>He opened the econ door quietly, shuffling inside as quietly as he could. Jinsoul looked up as the door closed and smiled. Hak gave a nod of acknowledgement to her where she sat next to Hyunjae, elbowing the other for his attention. Hyunjae looked up confused from his computer.  </p><p>“You got a sec?” Haknyeon asked, chewing on his bottom lip. </p><p>“I swear to god Hak, I’m trying to work,,” he sighed, waving the younger off. “Go ask Younghoon.” </p><p>Haknyeon’s breath shuddered. “Oh, ok…” he whispered back. “I guess I’m a burden for you too,” he muttered, turning away.  </p><p>“Oh holy shit you’re being serious,” Hyunjae realized a little late. “Is this about…?” but he didn’t even need to finish his question. It was always the same thing. </p><p>“Yeah,” Hak breathed softly. </p><p>“Hey, let’s go someone quiet, yeah?” Hyunjae coxed wrestling his body out from under the desk he was seated at. </p><p>They settled in the garden between the buildings, the gangway a distant chorus of laugh students and scuffled steps milling about. The sun was strong that day and the stone warm beneath them. </p><p>“What happened between you two?” Hyunjae asked. “This is really getting out of hand. Is it the GM thing?”</p><p>“Yeah, kind of,” Haknyeon sighed rubbing the back of his neck in frustration. “No, not really,” he decided, dropping his hand into his lap in defeat. “I don’t know,” he settled on before quieting down.   </p><p>“Didn’t you used to be friends with Jungeun?</p><p>“You mean ‘the traitor’?” </p><p>“You know it’s so funny. You have matching nicknames for each other.” </p><p>“Right <em> I’m </em>the traitor,” Hak mocked. “Because everything is always about her isn’t it!? Little miss princess cannot understand when she’s done something wrong. Must be someone else’s fault? Must be <em>my </em>fault?!” </p><p>“Hak, what happened?” </p><p>The other boy swallowed the lump in his throat and looked at Hyunjae with the most vulnerable expression he had ever had. </p><p>“Am I a disappointment?” he eventually asked. </p><p>“Hak-”</p><p>“Like I already know I’m a waste of the name,” he rambled out, stopping Hyunjae’s interjection. “But does she have to call me a fuck-up out loud?” </p><p>“You’re <em>not</em> a disappointment.” </p><p>“Well, you don’t think so,” Hak rung his hands together in his lap, voice beginning to shake and shoulders curling in on his body. “But it’s not you I’m worried about.” </p><p>A bright burst of laughter drew their attention to the floating walkway, heads immediately snapping toward the sound. Yein flitted across the bridge, bag smacking her back as she ran, followed by a smiling Jungeun who was yelling out demands about something or other. They passed through the door to the government building in a second and the yard was back to a sort of tame frenzy of chatter and movement. </p><p>“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Hyunjae assured the younger, reaching over to touch Hak’s shoulder. </p><p>The boy shrugged it off instantly. “Doesn’t matter. It’s true.” </p><p>“That is not what your family thinks, Hak,” Hyunjae tried to convinced him. “Trust me.”</p><p>Haknyeon stayed silent, chin dropped to his chest and gaze tucked into his lap. He looked so small to Hyunjae and the boy forgot for a moment how exactly he was in the running to be the next quartermaster. </p><p>“I know what would make you feel better,” Hyunjae said finally Haknyeon’s gaze up.</p><p>“What?” 	</p><p>A devilish grin broke out on the elder's face and if Hak hadn't already been aware of what Hyunjae was capable of, he surely would have been scared out of his witts. There wasn't a single thing which could prepare him for what events followed Hyunjae's next words, no one in the school could have been prepared the chaos which ensued. </p><p>Hyunjae leaned in close to Haknyeon and smirked. “A prank war.”</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Have a Nice Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jungeun look up from her computer to find the incessant fluttering of paper which had been annoying her for the past minutes was in fact Heejin ruthlessly scratching her backpack. Heejin and Hyunjin were supposed to be studying with her, but well, one was attempting to enter another dimension through her backpack – apparently – and Hyunjin was… Jungeun didn’t exactly know what she was doing. To be fair she never did. </p><p>“Hey, do you have your notes from the last study session with Juyeon?” Heejin asked her seat mate. </p><p>Jungeun snorted from across the coffee table. “Did you just ask Hyunjin for notes?”</p><p>Hyunjin, for her part, did not look remotely offended. </p><p>“Good point,” Heejin corrected. “But I lost mine,” she huffed, dropping her chin to her hand with a pout. “Wanna help me find them?” </p><p>Jungeun raised her eyebrow, lifted her laptop up from her crossed legs, and shook it slightly in the air. “Busy.” </p><p>“Come on,” the younger girl groaned. </p><p>“Staying at the top of the department isn’t easy.”</p><p>“But you’re not at the top of the department, are you?” Hyunjin teased. </p><p>Before Jungeun was out her seat, hand balled and ready to show exactly why she deserved to be, Heejin was snorting and slapping the back of Hyunjin’s head. </p><p>“Oww?” the other said affronted. </p><p>“It’s a sore subject right now,” Heejin whispered back to her. </p><p>“When is it not?” Hyunjin groaned back. </p><p>“Okay, but seriously will you help me find my notes? I kind of need them. There’s supposed to be a quiz on Tuesday.” </p><p>“There’s a quiz on Tuesday?” </p><p>Heejin glared at her. </p><p>“Okay, yeah whatever sure,” she paused. “But you have to do my Art of misdirection homework for me.” </p><p>“I don’t even take that class!” Heejin yelled. </p><p>“That’s because you have an extra class with Hwall so shut your goddamn mouth and stop complaining.” </p><p>Jungeun glanced over, not in interest or sympathy but in a weird sense of morbid curiosity. Heejin’s arm were crossed so tightly across her chest it look like she might pop. As the girl began to open her mouth, Hyunjin waved her off. </p><p>“Twice the exposure!” she argued back at the stunned girl. “Twice!” she added holding up her fingers with the air of a threat. </p><p>“It’s not my fault you didn’t sign up for bio-weapons!” Heejin defended. </p><p>A look of realization passed over Hyunjin’s face. “You’re right,” she breathed. “It was Yves. I blame her.” </p><p>“That’s the spirit!” Jungeun yelled back over the rattle of her furious typing. </p><p>“Are you doing homework or writing Hak a death threat?” Hyunjin asked, genuinely curious. </p><p>This had the mixed result of Jungeun’s simultaneous insulted gasp and a vaulted pencil whizzing into her shoulder from the girl’s extended hand. The graphite broke off in a shallow shard in her left shoulder blade. </p><p>“What is this? Beat on Hyunjin day??”</p><p>Heejin cackled in response. </p><p>“You still have to do my homework,” Hyunjin reminded her rubbing at her sore shoulder. </p><p>“You haven’t even found my notes yet.” </p><p>Hyunjin sighed and leaned over the arm of her chair to swiftly unbuckle her satchel and emerged from over the side no more than two seconds later with Heejin’s notes in her hand. “Here you go.” </p><p>“YOU FUCKING CHEATER!” </p><p>The sound of thundering feet rocketed through the hall before Jinsoul’s body flung itself through the door, skidding slightly on the wood floor as she flew into the room. </p><p>“Where are your-”</p><p>Yves and Haseul walked in calmly behind her, visibly exhausted, and waved off Jungeun’s inquiry as to the other girl’s footwear, or lack thereof. Yves reached over and slammed the door shut before entering the room.  </p><p>“Did you know the illuminati founded the government department?!” Jinsoul screeched. </p><p>Jungeun looked back over to Yves as the girl plopped down in the chair next to hers. The elder just shrugged and settled down into the plush cushion. Haseul went and perched herself on Heejin’s chair with a gentle smile and a soft ruffle of the younger’s hair. </p><p>“Kang just told me!” Jinsoul continued. </p><p>“Yeah and we all trust Kang,” Yves muttered. </p><p>“Pft! It was obviously the post-Molai templars,” Hyunjin threw back. </p><p>“No!” Heejin joined. “It was The Family.” </p><p>“Oh my god,” Yves groaned. “It was that joint cold war sabotage faction. Do they teach you nothing in first year history anymore?” </p><p>“Gov was only founded in the 1950s?” </p><p>Jungeun turned to Haseul. “You’re a government major? Shouldn’t you know?” </p><p>“No one’s perfect,” she responded confidently.  </p><p>Heejin erupted into a fit of giggles. “Juyeon thinks so.”</p><p>Haseul groaned. “Oh god, I know.” </p><p>“He’s so obvious.” The words tumbled out of Yves mouth amidst a fit of breathy laughter. </p><p>“He’s so obvious!” Haseul agreed enthusiastically. </p><p>Heejin sat there grumbling, not very covertly, about having to do Hyunjin’s homework, and Haseul reached out in apology petting her head again. </p><p>“Dude,” Yves called out. “Just don’t do it for her??”</p><p>“This is all your fault!” Heejin yelled at her which had the other girl gawking in confusion. </p><p>“How on earth is this-”</p><p>BOOM! </p><p>The room filled with a flash bang, exploding in a cacophony of crashes and cracks, like thunder sounding off at the climax of a storm. A thick smoke seeped from a spot on the ground, roping the room into a hazy mist. Haseul fell of the chair next to Heejin, Yves vaulted over and grabbed Jungeun into her arms, cocooning the smaller girl into her body. Hyunjin screamed and jumped up to scramble back from the object emitting the horrid mist, a metal scrape rolling in on the hardwood as Jinsoul stuffed her face into the pillow she had dragged into her lap. </p><p>Haseul landed on her hip on the floor and began coughing, a stinging needle-like sensation taking over her eyes and throat. Heejin and Jinsoul both reached down to help her and inhaled the smoke as they got lower, both tumbling out of their seat and onto the carpet beside their friend. Yves squeezed Jungeun into herself, attempting in vain to protect the younger from whatever the hell was going on. Hyunjin had made it to the window amidst a fit of labored breathes and was clawing at the window latch. </p><p>Jungeun looked up from Yves’s shoulder and saw a small metal ball roll to her feet, tapping at her shoe and halting. Through her teary eyes, she made out a small yellow smiley face on the grenade with the scrawled message, ‘Have a Nice Day’ underneath. She knew that handwriting. </p><p>The room slowly filled with whatever strange and thrown together mix of sulfur dioxide and phosgene that two non-medical or bio-chem majors could slap together, chocking the girls slowly. The door opened and the mist immediately began seeping out into the corridor and allowing their lungs a small respite. Two boys stood in the doorway with gasmasks and triumphant stances. Jinsoul’s gaze swung across the floorboards, to the faint light of the hallway sectioned in the door’s threshold and spotted a familiar pair of loafers. </p><p>“Hyunj-!!” she yelled, voice giving out half way through. </p><p>“I didn’t know you would be here!” his unmistakable voice drifted out from beneath the mask. </p><p>“Would that have mattered?!”	</p><p>He looked over at Hak’s genuinely happy smile barely visible from under the weathered gasmask as he watched Jungeun roll on the floor coughing up her lungs with a pained expression. “You know what, no. I don’t think it would have.” </p><p>“You asshole!” Jungeun screamed from Yves’ hold, her throat raw from the hacking cough which ravaged her body. 	</p><p>Hak, with all his years of experience and all his infinite wisdom, stuck his tongue out at her in reply. </p><p>“You better run boys,” Yves threatened, picking herself up and shooting the deadly glare she had become known for. </p><p>And so they did exactly that, a cackling joy echoing down the hall as their propelled themselves away in hollers and yops and laughter.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. It takes Two to Tango</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“YOU GAVE THEM CHEMICAL PNEUMONIA?!” Jacob voice rang out, but it wasn’t angry; It was just so worn out and flabbergasted it came out in a high pitched shriek of astonishment </p><p>“It was mild,” Haknyeon drawled back in defense.  </p><p>“CHEMICAL PNEUMONIA!” Jacob screamed before calming himself down. “Why them, Hak? We’re all friends with Haseul,” he breathed out, gripping his hair in truly amazing amount of frustration. “Heck, Juyeon’s in love with her and Hyunjae is platonically married to Jinsoul.” </p><p>Hak tilted his head with a thoughtful look. “Is it platonic though?” </p><p>“That’s what you got out of that?” </p><p>“They have like 5 kids, dude.” </p><p>Jacob pulled his hands down his face in with a groan. “AND YOU GAVE 6 PNEUMONIA?!” </p><p>“Your point is?” Hak questioned. </p><p>Jacob mumbled another vexed sigh. It was impossible attempting to install a sense of self-preservation in any of his friends but Hak was by far the hardest. The kid had arrived at the point where he ran toward cannon fire naked and covered in ammunition. </p><p>“Come, on,” Hak complained. “It was for Jungeun. They just happened to be there.” </p><p>“Collateral damage,” Hyunjae added with a shrug from beside him, both leaning on the wall outside the dining hall. Why there were doing this outside was beyond Jacob but well, he and Younghoon had finally managed to physically catch both of them on their way back from dinner and it was now or never. “And to reiterate,” Hyunjae continued. “It was mild.” </p><p>“That’s psychotic.” Younghoon laughed. </p><p>“Yeah!” Jacob agreed but with an entirely different tone. “It kinda is!” </p><p>“Ugh, he’s so good,” Kevin groaned. </p><p>Hak looked over to the other, standing slightly behind the two fourth years and bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently. “Why are you here??” Hak asked him. </p><p>“I was with Jacob,” he offered. “…and I’m nosy.” </p><p>“But you,” Jacob pointed at Hyunjae. “Shouldn’t you know better.”</p><p>Hyunjae folded his arms with a pout.</p><p>“But it’s bro code,” Hak answered with a saddened exhalation. 	</p><p>“The most sacred of all things,” Kevin nodded. </p><p>“Did I even ask you to come?” Jacob threw at him. </p><p>“No but you asked me to,” Younghoon interjected. “And quite frankly I don’t see the problem here.” </p><p>“They poisoned our friends.” </p><p>“It was funny.” Younghoon taunted back at his friend. </p><p>“They’re more like acquaintances,” Kevin added, deep in thought. </p><p>“Kevin, why have you decided now of all days to betray me?” Jacob whined. “God this is so hard how the hell did Sangyeon do this?” </p><p>A scoff caught his attention and he looked over to see Hak loose smirk dripping off his face. </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Jacob, you’re not doing any less than Sangyeon. You might even be doing more.” </p><p>“Your words of affirmation mean noting to me and I’m still mad at you, BOTH of you. You two aren’t allowed to hang out unsupervised anymore.”</p><p>“You can’t do that!” Hyunjae whined, legitimately stomping his foot against the mossy cobblestone. “We’re the same goddamn age!” </p><p>“Yeah, what the hell?” Hak joined in. </p><p>Jacob levelled them with a look they both knew was supposed to instill a sense of resolute intimidation upon them which somehow always looked more so like a kicked puppy. “Are you arguing with me?”</p><p>“No,” Hak grumbled. </p><p>“Yes,” Hyunjae said without a lick of hesitation. </p><p>Younghoon elbowed the other in the side. “No,” he corrected. </p><p>“Good,” Jacob smiled with a clap of his hands. “Run along now, just not together, of course.” </p><p>And what did Haknyeon do when he was feeling wronged, when he was feeling betrayed and vindictive and needed the validation of his peers, equally as vengeful as he was. Well, ideally he would find Hwall but regrettably the kid was so grossly aloof that he refused to engage in matters unbeneficial to him. So he decided to seek out the next best thing, two unassuming first years. Eric and Sunwoo were doing what they did best which was of course nothing much of anything and certainly not what they were supposed to be doing. </p><p>“Jacob forbid me from hanging out with Hyunjae,” Hak sighed, throwing his body across the boy’s lap in a melodramatic stretch.</p><p>Sunwoo eyed him, the suspicion practically radiating off him. </p><p> “Jacob forbid me from plotting with Hyunjae,” he corrected begrudgingly. </p><p>“Why?” Eric asked. “What’d you do?” </p><p>“I gave Jungeun and others mild chemical pneumonia.”</p><p>“Dude!” Sunwoo laughed. </p><p>“Mild!” Hak defended. </p><p>Eric seemed to shift in his seat. “Which others are we talking about?” </p><p>“All of them.” </p><p>“ALL OF THEM?!” Eric exploded. “You practically declared war on the most intimidating group of girls at Genius?”</p><p>“What do you mean practically?” Sunwoo snorted. </p><p>“Also, I would like to state for the record that she very much deserved it and it’s amazing I held out this long in the first place.” </p><p>“Well la di da, good for you for not killing anyone yet,” Eric mocked. </p><p>“I know that’s sarcastic but thank you anyways.” </p><p>“Wait a second,” Sunwoo drawled, finally shoving the boy languidly lain across his lap onto the floor with a thud and a groan, which by far was the longest amount of time Haknyeon had ever spent on the younger’s lap without an aggression displacement. </p><p>Hak looked up from the floor and motioned for Sunwoo to continue. </p><p>“What I’m getting out of this conversation is that you pranked Jungeun without me?” Sunwoo questioned. “Without even consulting me for ideas???” </p><p>“Hey, it was a spur of the moment thing.” </p><p>“No, no, he has a point,” Eric joined. “I mean what you did was stupid but maybe it’s worse that you didn’t ask Sunwoo?” </p><p>“Sunwoo,” Hak deadpanned at the other. “Would you like to help me prank the traitor?” </p><p>“I mean why would I help? You didn’t even think of me for the last one?” </p><p>Hak and Eric made eye contact as Sunwoo mimed his own overdramatic soap opera, the former mouthing at the later, ‘Is he serious?’ to which the latter shrugged back with a confused<br/>
expression. </p><p>“Should I not ask you?” Hak threw at Sunwoo. </p><p>“Eric, he doesn’t even know. Oh my god.” </p><p>“I don’t even know???” </p><p>Sunwoo leaned over and patted Eric’s knee. “I know you’re just saying that to make him feel better.” </p><p>“I’m literally not. I’m so confused right now.” </p><p>And perhaps Haknyeon should have gone to Sunwoo first because the kid was an evil mastermind. Well, most Genius kids were indeed masterminds with the propensity for less than legal or moral things, but Sunwoo had a streak of straight mischief Haknyeon swore was unrivaled. They spent the night planning away, scheming little things they wrote down in a notebook which was supposed to be for Mr. Briknorodger's class but had remained empty this far into the year. It made him feel better... to know that his friends were there when he wanted them to be, when he needed them to be. When the world was against him, he never stood against it alone and maybe that made it all worth it. That and the fact that when he began to grow tired from the plotting and the planning, Eric's bed was 200% more comfortable than his own for whatever mysterious reason. There was a smile on his face when he drifted off that night to the snores of the two younger students and then it all had to be wrecked, didn't it? </p><p>Haknyeon’s eyes sprung open to a shift in the air and a whisper dusting the side of his face. In the night he could barely see more than the outline of a figure standing over him but he knew the voice well enough on its own to have no doubt of who it was. </p><p>“I just want to let you know that I could slit your fucking throat right now,” Jungeun purred into his ear. “But we both know blood is a bitch ass stain to get out of silk.” </p><p>The last k came out in a click of her lavished tongue, almost intriguing before the sharp end of very, very long blade made contract with his skin. She only pushed it just enough against the side of his neck to sting a shallow sliver of flesh, but it was, by no means, the Hak had wanted to wake up to. Jungeun then smothered his mouth with a disgustingly sweet smell and then a frenzy of stars began to dance into his eyes, a filter of hazy sleep overtaking his vision and mind as he held it there over his face. </p><p>“How your lungs doing?” he managed to cough out before his head slumped to the side and a void overtook him within the warm comforts of Eric’s bed, comforter entangled with his legs. </p><p>It was scary waking up at Genius, for everyone. Sure it wore down the longer you spent at school and the more you asserted your own standing among the other students and the better locks you invested in for your doors, but it never completely wore away: the inherently intrepid anxiety of awaking to a new dawn after the vulnerable hours of the night. But Hak was sure this was probably where all of those emotions started, from situations like this. </p><p>He sprang up in the bed, recalling Jungeun’s voice in his ear and immediately tumbled out of bed in a clatter of metal scratches, immediately impaling his right side on something  piercing out of Eric and Sunwoo’s floorboards. He screamed as the thing impaled him and a pool of red began staining his pajama shirt. The noise awaked the two roommates, one startling and leaning over the side of bed to see Hak amidst a sea of knives sticking up from their floor and the other sitting up and skootching into the wall where there too were daggers puncturing the surface. Eric balked at the room, it looked like a rudimentary hunting trap more than a dorm at this point with nearly every surface covered in protruding switchblades and scalpels and the like. It vaguely reminded him of the pranks his old non-Factory friends used to play with upended cups of water, but well a rather Genius version of it. </p><p>Hak continued to groan on the floor and Sunwoo now littered the air around him with curses as his pack was pricked with too many knives to count, shallow stabs across his entire shoulder blades stinging his nerve endings. </p><p>“What the-”</p><p>“FUCKING JUNGEUN!” Haknyeon screamed up from the floor, his writhing causing his body to flail into more blades, a healthy chunk of his ear now resting on the wood beside his head.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Where Your Loyalties Lie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“No way,” Moonbin breathed out, dead serious with a chill raising up his spine. “Really?” </p><p>“Yup,” Jinsoul threw back. “Really.” </p><p>“But how did-”</p><p>Jinsoul reached her hand out and patted the younger’s cheek in the same affectionate motion one would give a small, adorable, ignorantly naïve child. “Ask no questions and seek no answers,” she smiled down at him with an alarmingly disarming wink. </p><p>“I thought that-”</p><p>Jinsoul tutted her finger back and forth in prevention which had Moonbin, again, confusedly quieting down. She settled back down into the dining hall chair, arms crossed and head held high, one leather clad leg crossed over the other because the girl had never and would never adhere to the Factory’s dress codes. </p><p>“Can you still help me with my homework?” he eventually whispered across the table at her. 	</p><p>“Of course, sweetie,” she hummed. “You are my favorite after all.” </p><p>“I fucking knew it!” </p><p>Jinsoul threw her head back and laughed the bright smile which somehow always looked so out of place amidst her usual glower and smiled again. “Make sure to tell the others.” </p><p>Moonbin very much left dinner with his self-appointed mom that night with a fully formed and a perhaps disastrously dangerous piece of information on his hands. Hands stuffed into the pockets of a old, soft cardigan as his fingers twitched with the excitement and anxious energy that only came after sensitive information sharing. What did one do when they were handed the holy grail of gossip well knowing that it could, and would, tear apart friendships? He went to go tell his best friend. </p><p>“Chan,” he drawled into the boy’s ear as the other sat huddled over one of the thickest books the library held. </p><p>Moonbin knew the other would attempt to escape the second he alerted his present to him and had effectively used his body the cage the marginally younger boy between himself and the open window. Without the route of avoidance available, Minchan had elected to ignore the pestering. </p><p>“Min,” Moonbin breathed directly into his ear. “Min…Chan” </p><p>“No,” the boy finally bit out. 	</p><p>“Chan…Minnie Minchan.” </p><p>“Oh my god, what?!” </p><p>“Wanna know a secret?” Moonbin smirked. </p><p>“I know all your secrets, idiot,” Minchan sighed moving to push past the other with his hefty piece of literature. 	</p><p>“That’s the fun part,” Moonbin whispered back eyeing the studying students around them before turning back to him. “It isn’t mine.” </p><p>He leaned forward to whisper into Minchan’s ear and a moment later, pulled back with a satisfied expression, he saw Minchan’s eyes go wide with disbelief. </p><p>“Oh no,” the boy muttered, slapping a hand over his mouth and before Moonbin could stop him the other was viscously slamming his book into Moonbin’s chest and scurrying out of the room. </p><p>He ran smack dab into the exact boy he was looking for after rounding the corner into the underground government-economics corridor which historically had been built as a bunker during the almost third world war and now sat with fake windows painted curtesy of the very sun deprived students who were forced to frequent it. </p><p>“Where are you going?” Kevin asked and Minchan grabbed the other’s shoulders and yelled into his face, “GEUSS WHAT?!” </p><p>They both paused and blinked lifelessly at each other while they processed the two very different ways they had addressed their encounter. </p><p>“What are you-”</p><p>“KEVIN!” Minchan groaned. “I really shouldn’t tell you this but I also feel like I need to tell you this but also I know I know Moonbin doesn’t want me telling you but also I don’t even know if he thought of telling in the first place or not!” the boy rambled. </p><p>Kevin let him catch his breath before inquiring as to the very important and ambiguously classified thing to which Minchan spoke of and was rewarded for his curiosity with a detailed account of the very important and ambiguously classified thing itself. Kevin then vaulted his body off of Minchan’s shoulder, jostling the boy’s body as he propelled himself away and ran through the hall, feet thundered and echoing off the walls. </p><p>Here’s the thing, the clandestine department had a ranking, posted in a flame retardant, laminated, unreasonable, sealed, official, acid-proof document which sat on the door to their auditorium where relevant first year lectures, the occasional overflow class, and the department’s meeting were held. This ranking granted nothing more than satisfaction, but oh was notoriety and prestige the blood and sinew Genius was built upon, bone and title together married in the institution itself. And not to say that the other departments did not indeed have their own rankings, but it was different. It was calmer in a way, indifferent. </p><p>And maybe, this is but a rumor circulated amidst loose lips and fat tips, but maybe certain persons of interest were known to attempt to mishandle, alter, or otherwise remove the rankings from the auditorium door. Of course, there was little to no way to even know if this was true granted it was in fact clandestine kids who planned, executed, and covered up such activities. Maybe that was what led to the god-like auspicious demeanor the numbers had taken on and the authority they granted. It was well known the competition to achieve the first place was brutal, but no one could understand the lengths to which the infamous top two of the second year class had engaged in that rivalry. </p><p>Haknyeon stood fuming in front of the list, eyes narrowed to a number which has been graced by his name for the entire year so far, one which held strong since the end of his prior year and which he expected, no which he needed, to accompany him through all his years at the Factory. He’d like to argue that was what led him to deck Kevin right in the middle of the poor kid’s face, full throttle and without any thought of repercussions and even who exactly he was pummeling in the split second an unlikely soul decided to tap his shoulder. </p><p>A strangled noise came out of Kevin’s mouth in alarm. Kevin, granted he was of a slightly less sturdy nature than his dear friend, reeled back, clutching his now broken and profusely bleeding nose as his but hid the hard floor. </p><p>“WHAT DID I DO?!” he screamed in response, cupping his face and spitting out some of the blood which had dripped onto his mouth. </p><p>Hak’s eyes widened as he finally fully registered what had happened. “SHUT UP, I’M SORRY!” </p><p>“Dude! Seriously?” Kevin chastised. “We’re on a punch now and ask questions later kind of agenda and I’m on the punch side?” </p><p>“I’m in a weird mood!”</p><p>“No shit!” the elder mocked, motioning to his bloodied face theatrically. “What the hell,” he breathed out vexed, attempting to stand again. </p><p>Haknyeon reached out to steady the other’s arm which was both accepted and received a roll of Kevin’s eyes simultaneously. </p><p>“And to think I came to tell you something you really ought to know.” </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Well Minchan just told me something he heard from Moonbin who knows from Jinsoul the people responsible for knifing up your room.” </p><p>“Is that what we’re calling it?” </p><p>Kevin shrugged. “I feel like it gets the point across.” </p><p>“Whatever. I knew it was Jungeun.” </p><p>“No,” Kevin corrected in frustration. “It was Jungeun <em>and</em> Hyunjin <em>and</em> Jinsoul <em>and</em> Yves.” </p><p>“So?”</p><p>“Hak this isn’t a rivalry anymore,” Kevin said softly. “You started a war.” </p><p>The boy stared back at him silently, no crushing weight of realization or responsibility falling upon his shoulder but a weird different sense of something unplaceable. </p><p>“What are you going to do about it?” 	</p><p>Three hours later and newly bathed in the waxing moonlight of pre-midnight Genius, Haknyeon had his answer. Okay, he knew this was not exactly what Kevin had expected as a response but hell, it was what he envisioned in the aftermath of the elder’s question. He looked up to the fourth story window where a chorus of girls’ screams resounded, tumbling out the window into the night air and dancing in his ears. He heard Sunwoo and Eric snickering beside him, the two falling off each other as their bodies racked with laughter. Hyunjae stood before him with the most satisfied and proud look Hak had ever seen the other wear. They fled the building, darting across the cobblestone pavers, underneath arches and through perfectly pristine flowerbeds. They screamed and laughed into the darkening sky with the kids of harshly wide smiles which hurt and threatened to never your face. </p><p>Sunwoo slammed to a still as soon as he opened the door to Matija Hall. A familiar face sat in the amber wash of a hanging sconce hanging above the oversized wingback that sat at the base of the main staircase. </p><p>“Did you all decide to be stupid when you woke up this morning or did it just happen spontaneously?” Juyeon asked as all the boys came stumbling inside to stand in a haphazard line before him like a police-line up at a country club. “I got an interesting phone call.” </p><p>Hyunjae merely met his gaze, moving to cross his arms and school his expression. Haknyeon halted a laugh as it caught mid-way in his throat, and Sunwoo wearily shifted on his feet, ringing his hands together behind his back. </p><p>“You know what!” Eric argued back, agitation muffled as Juyeon ignored him in favor of locking gazes with Hyunjae. </p><p>“And why are you helping? You really should know better? </p><p>Hyunjae then did something terrifying; he snorted in Juyeon’s face. The other raised his eyebrow with a tense jaw, tapping his foot against the floor and waiting for a valid response. </p><p>“Hak is my child?” Hyunjae shrugged, intimidatingly cavalier about the whole ordeal. </p><p>“So it’s hereditary,” Juyeon teased. “Are they all yours then?” </p><p>“YOU KNOW WHAT?” Eric fumed louder the original line. </p><p>“What?!” Juyeon yelled back. “You want to defend your own idiocy?!” </p><p>Sunwoo sighed, rolling his eyes. “I think it’s time for all of us to realize how much Juyeon sucks.”  </p><p>“Do you see what you’re doing?” Juyeon stood up abruptly and marched over to Haknyeon and Hyunjae specifically. “You’re going to tear the whole school apart?!”</p><p>“When did you turn into the voice of reason?” the fellow fourth year scoffed. </p><p>“It’s because of Haseul,” Eric mumbled from his left. </p><p>“NO! ITS BECAUSE YOU STUFFED LEECHES INTO THE GIRL’S SHOWERS!”</p><p>“They were fire eels actually, “ Sunwoo added as if it matted in their defense. </p><p>“Yeah, don’t knock us,” Eric parroted. “Those things are way more difficult to buy.” </p><p>“Oh my god,” Hyunjae moaned, shouldering past Juyeon. “Where the fuck is Younghoon?” he threw over his shoulder as he ascended the staircase with booming steps. </p><p>A voice remained quiet the last minute they spoke and Juyeon looked over to see Hak standing there with an unreadable expression. </p><p>“You’re taking Jungeun’s side?” the boy asked quietly, sadly even. </p><p>Juyeon stepped toward him before the younger backed away with an odd look in his eye. “What sides? What do you mean sides?” he asked. </p><p>“Haseul was the one that called you, didn’t she?” the younger said, but it wasn’t exactly an inquiry and the silence which met it was a clear indicator his assumptions were right. </p><p>“You have to choose Juyeon,” Hak deadpanned. “And I don’t think you have a lot of time.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Let's Call It Opportunism</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Heejin had watched the Godfather once in her life, a considerable while ago and distracted by her phone at the time. But still, she would argue she had seen it. There was one scene in particular which she recalled having marginally paid attention to: the diner scene. Two men, perhaps enemies perhaps comrades on opposing sides of a infinite battle on moral ambiguity, seated across from each other and discussing, with charged words, the honor and the responsibility their lives held as if to say, ‘We’re not so different, you and I’. Sitting in silence with Hyunjin by her side and staring at Juyeon across the library table felt oddly like that scene. He had walked up at their scheduled time and sat down in his usual chair, folding his arms over one another on the desk surface, and then… nothing. </p><p>“So…” Hyunjin drawled, gaze directed and locked with the elder boy’s. </p><p>“So…” he drawled back, not moving a muscle. </p><p>“So?” Heejin asked, glancing between the two of them. </p><p>“So,” Juyeon repeated yet again, a very diplomatic expression etched on his face. “I have no qualm with either of you.” </p><p>Hyunjin leaned back in her chair with a lifted chin. “And I harbor no hostility for you, grandpa.” </p><p>Juyeon’s lip twitched upward slightly on the left side before it fell down again. “When you address me like that I kind feel like you do.” </p><p>“What are you guys talking about?”, Heejin whispered to Hyunjin. </p><p>Hyunjin ignored her, favoring the battle of wills she was apparently engaged in with her tutor. “You have done nothing to me and my kin, merely a bystander of war.” </p><p>Juyeon nodded thoughtfully with a hum before adding, “As I do not approve of the childish skirmishes.” </p><p>“Nor do I.”</p><p>Heejin leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table and inserting herself into Juyeon’s space. “Are we reenacting the godfather?” </p><p>“I was worried you two might be sucked into Factory politics,” Juyeon admitted. </p><p>“We do not blindly obey the masses; we are independent women of Genius.” </p><p>“So it’s the god father right?!” Heejin asked again, a little frustrated but mostly seeking validation. </p><p>“I want to protect you with my whole heart,” Juyeon murmured, shoulders softening at Heejin’s naively bewildered pestering.</p><p>Heejin scoffed. “Well, you better not half-ass it.” </p><p>“I rescind any paternal instincts I have ever had toward you.”  </p><p>“That’s illegal!” Hyunjin yelled without hesitation. “Pay me child support!”</p><p>“No!” Juyeon balked. </p><p>“BUT I’M BABY!” Heejin added. </p><p>Juyeon threw his arm across the table to point at her, eyes barreling down the length of his arm at her. “THAT DOES NOT HOLD UP IN A COURT OF LAW!” </p><p>“Well, that’s astounding,” she mocked, throwing her hands into the air as Hyunjin snickered. “Dear world am I surprised! I mean just paint me like an attendee at the World’s fair of Chicago, World Columbian Exposition witnessing electric light for the first time amidst a politically innovative battle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison.”</p><p>Hyunjin stopped laughing and turned to her in silence. </p><p>“Wait, what?” Juyeon asked knitting his eyebrows. </p><p>“You know,” Heejin shrugged. “Because it’s so surprising. </p><p>Hyunjin sighed, reaching out and placing a gentle hand on the other girl’s knee. “Sometimes I wonder, I let myself slip and I think about the type of person you are and the types of thoughts you have and then I remember I could never possibly ever hope to know and I give up without regret.” </p><p>“How are you friends??”</p><p>Two heads swiveled simultaneously to meet him, hair flipping in wide luscious arcs of their shoulder with a waft of sweet lilies drifting from the sweep. </p><p>“We’re straight up soulmates,” Hyunjin defended. </p><p>Heejin nodded very seriously. “Bitch from another sitch.” </p><p>“Temporal sitch to clarify.”  </p><p>“Oh, of course,” Heejin agreed. “Homie from another momie.” </p><p>If it was possible for Juyeon’s brain to short circuit he was sure it would have by now, not by anything his friends ever did but by whatever species these girls seemed to be.</p><p>“I literally only ever understand half the words which come out of your mouth,” he responded, very slowly. </p><p>Heejin frowned at him with a pout. “It’s cause you’re old.”  </p><p>“I would like to say,” Hyunjin started. “That we have a reasonability to take care of the elderly but he’s already too far gone.”  </p><p>Juyeon seemed mildly hurt before brushing it off in realization. “Let the record stand that I can now plead insanity and you can’t hold me accountable for anything anymore.” </p><p>“But I’m baby,” Heejin whined. </p><p>“Still not a legally valid argument!” he yelled back. </p><p>And it went on like this, it always went on like this, with a session that consisted more of rebuttals and linguistic jabs in their little verbal joust of mutual stress relief and, although not admitted, a bit of affection. Of course, two hours was a considerably long time to expect two first years, let alone teenage girls in love with anything and everything that presented itself before their eyes and reined in by only the soft mannered, generally aloof manner of a desperately exhausted third year. Hyunjin would re-ask the same question no less than four times without really listening to any of the answers he gave and then think of it herself in the end anyways. Heejin, for her part, would at least finish all the problems Juyeon presented her with, although grumbling all the way. The thing was, they didn’t really need tutoring in Juyeon’s opinion. He was more like a recording of a lecture they didn’t pay attention to in the first place, which, if they did, none of the three would have to be here. </p><p>Inevitably, the phase would come when Hyunjin would munch louder and louder on whatever snack she had stuck in that day, slowly pulling it from her bag as if no one noticed, which everyone always did. The louder her smacking lips and the further Juyeon knew she was into the realm of no longer caring. And then Heejin would start shifting in her seat, legs scuffing against the underside of the desk as she constantly rearranged her weight in the chair and Juyeon knew it was only a matter of time before her phone miraculously appeared in her hand. It was like clockwork and Juyeon knew each and every pattern of when to stop trying. The death sentence though, where he might have just got up and left instead of stubbornly attempting in vain to continue their session, were the baffling questions that dripping from Heejin’s brain without preamble. </p><p>“What do you think would happen if I become part of the sea?” the girl muttered, almost wistfully and almost scared at the same time. </p><p>“You’re supposed to be going over the anatomical weak points chart I made you,” Juyeon merely replied, motioning to the papers in front of her. </p><p>Hyunjin, ever the supportive best friends, indulged all the things which spilled out of Heejin’s mouth, well usually. “Do you mean like a sailor?” she asked the other. </p><p>“No,” Heejin sighed. “Like part of the sea,” she reiterated enunciating the second word so thoroughly that popping sound emitted on the first syllable. </p><p>“Like a fish?” Juyeon tried again. </p><p>“God, you guys really aren’t getting this, are you?” Heejin’s frustrated sigh came out. </p><p>“Well, you’re not getting a B in Fragility, are you?” the older boy taunted back. </p><p>Heejin gasped. “That’s a low blow.” </p><p>“Jungeun just indirectly stabbed three of my friends and that’s a low blow?” Juyeon threw at her. </p><p>“I thought we weren’t going to talk about it,” Hyunjin calmly reminded him. </p><p>“Oh my god,” Juyeon groaned, slapping his textbooks shut. “Just go,” he waved them off. “I know you’re not doing anything anyways.” </p><p>“Thanks Juyeon!” they beamed, hopping up from their chairs instantly. </p><p>Heejin ran over and kissed his cheek before bouncing off after Hyunjin who was taking the largest steps Juyeon had ever seen her take. A soft smile made its way up on Juyeon’s face as they ran out, pencils falling from open bags and swinging on their shoulders narrowly missing the seated kids around the room while they ran past. </p><p>Juyeon slowly gathered his things and went to find someone to entertain him in the hour he had free before his meeting with the medicine department’s counselor. Independent research proposals for medicine were due before they left at the end of the year and he very much had not given it thought beyond the occasional racing brain as he feel asleep in the cocoon of his two tangled down comforters. Okay barely even then but that wasn’t his fault: a considerable portion of his day was either taken up by wrangling his friends and preventing them from causing enough trouble to warrant probation and daydreaming about Haseul, both of which took up a lot of mental energy. </p><p>He shouldered through the heavy, main library door smiling at Younghoon in the corner with Seonghwa, his own roommate notorious for missing the dinner invitations Juyeon extended to him. It was windy today, a whipping air which blew his hair straight towards the heavens and his tie into his face with a slapping speed. He wrestled down his loose ends before pulling his jacked tightly closed and smoothing his hair down, running into the stone archway which connected the building to the cyber department. A group of second years he recognized as econ students were sitting in the window of the arched passage, throwing tiny paper rockets into the wind and betting where they happened to explode along the brick face. If he remembered correctly, Chanhee should have just finished his workshop on SCADA and Distributed Denial of Services attacks and would remain at his monitor for the next half hour practicing like the diligent cyber operation’s student he was. </p><p>“Hey,” Juyeon nodded to the other third year, entering the virtually empty lecture room and lowering himself into the bean bag beside the other’s work station, letting his body melt into the fabric. </p><p>Chanhee nodded back before what Juyeon could only describe as a coquettish expression washed over the other’s face. “I need some bitcoin.”</p><p>“Okay? Why?”</p><p>Chanhee shrugged, turning back to his screen and crossing his legs. “Reasons,” he said. </p><p>"Can't you steal it?"</p><p>"I'm tired." </p><p>Juyeon pocked the inside of his mouth with his tongue and mulled it over. “How many?”</p><p>“I don’t know, like ten would be good.” </p><p>“Ten bitcoin?” Juyeon asked. </p><p>“Yeah, like ten.” </p><p>“That’s like…” Juyeon paused for a second. “100,000 dollars?”</p><p>“More like 90,400,” was the response he received from an otherwise occupied Chanhee, staring at schematics which gave Juyeon a headache. </p><p>“Yeah?”</p><p>“And?” Chanhee looked over, raising an eyebrow as if to say, ‘What on earth could 90,000 dollars mean to you, you economically saturated child.’ </p><p>“…I’ll give you 8.” </p><p>Chanhee smiled back now, deceptively innocent. </p><p>“But also,” Juyeon tacked on. “If I’m asked about investing in some shoddy scheme, I will throw you under the bus in an instant.” </p><p>“Fair enough.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. All's Fair in War and... well, war</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>If anyone noticed I have gone from writing Juhaknyeon to Haknyeon to Hak it's because I have now seen so many videos of the child I feel like I know him enough to call him by a nickname</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Wednesday, 6:14 am, started with a bang. Probability wise Wednesday mornings were more likely to be met with explosions as was by some odd collection of data over the Factory’s years. If you asked why, the chance your next wake-up call would smell like burning sulfur was a large one, so most never questioned it. They had been conditioned to awaken to the thrilling boom like a sunrise cannon throughout the island. If it was loud enough it would echo off the tall stone walls at the entrance and ricochet back to pick up the lazy stragglers with covered shoved over their heads, thundering into open windows and shaking the steel framed against their thick glass panels, the buildings almost reminiscing in their own, old Blitzkrieg days. As a result, of this particular morning and many others like it, the study body was a little more heavily footed and sluggishly slow traversing the grounds between classes with a more ‘accidents’ than the regular day and noticeably less volatile hollers. Of course never none, but less: almost peaceful in an ironic stillness brought by the metallic roar of colliding whims and the means to execute them.</p><p>Wednesdays bangs brought almost the entire population of the school to the dining for breakfast, at least 30% more than usual days. They sat smushed and packed, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, with hidden daggers and vials brushing up against each other in a strange cohabitation of secrets. Hak stood behind a healthy line around 20 or so kids waiting for coffee before the sterling silver espresso machines. The smell almost smacked him in the face as he got closer, the sheer force of literal vats of caffeine dousing the space with an air that might do as much as good as the drink itself in inhaling life into the throng of students surrounding it. </p><p>He stumbled  bit when someone rolled into his shoulder, sliding in front of him at the last second and grabbing onto the strap of his backpack. A smiling Jihoon came into view, fluffy hair and cherub faced with eyebrow slits and a crystal nose stud no doubt anything but real and always perfectly polished. Hak steadied the boy on his feet, loafers scuffing the tiled floor as Jihoon whooshed his ever unruly bangs to he side with a flick of his head. </p><p>“Looking for coffee?” the boy smirked, holding out a steaming thermos in Hak’s direction which had, miraculously, managed to not spill onto the floor during his careening entrance into Hak’s personal space. </p><p>“Oh my god,” Hak breathed, extending his hands out slowly in reverence. “I think I’m in love with you,” he muttered completely serious as his eyes drifted up from the gifted beverage and to the other’s eyes. </p><p> “Just take the coffee, dude,” Jihoon laughed, clapping him on the back. </p><p>The force of his affection jostled his own figure and in the next second Jihoon had gone from grinning widely at his friends to staring horrified down at his now scalding and brown white oxford. </p><p>“No! I waited in like for like twenty minutes! I’ve never had to wait that long in my life!” he whined out, vocal chords reaching a remarkably shrill tone. </p><p>Hak took a step back, wearing looking to Jihoon, and the another before the other boy eventually drew his gaze to Hak in realization. They stood there for a moment gauging each other, calculating, before Jihoon wordlessly parried forward with a claw like grip at Hak’s coffee and the boy in defense spun on his heel and sprinted from the dining hall. </p><p>“Hey, no fair!” a voice called through the space, filling the vaulted rafters as Hak exited through the space. “You owe me!”</p><p>Hak had his hand on the door, fingers curled around the handle, when he stopped and walked back to the inner door, separating the entryway from the mess hall. He peaked his head inside to see Jihoon standing there, arms crossed, statuesque pout etched on his face and seemingly unerasable before he yelled back, “No, I don’t! It was a friendship coffee!”, and he was running away again. </p><p>He caught his breathe outside, lungs heaving with jovial hefts of air, a bright smile stretched on his face, one he had been wearing quite a bit lately, most memorably in relation to a certain fire eel re-habitation process. The clock’s resounding tick caused Hak to flinch as it tolled, and he realized he was going to miss it. He downed the thermos in one go, tongue stinging at the heat and brain jumpstarting, and then booked it. The school was easily navigable now, in the end of his second year, having memorized the straights and the cuts, the tunnels and the physically intensive cheats and climbs, but if it was the beginning of his time at Genius there was no way he ever would have made it to the Cyber department in four and a half minutes. </p><p>“I’m sorry I’m late,” he grumbled, walking up to Chanhee where the other sat amidst a couple of his classmates and department elders. </p><p>“I don’t care,” Chanhee scoffed lightheartedly with a dismissive wave. </p><p>“I do!” Hak complained. “And I’m sorry.” </p><p>Chanhee remained silent, a disgustingly baffled air about him. Hak raised his eyebrow expectantly, big bright eyes boring into the other’s. </p><p>“You’re forgiven?” </p><p>That seemed to appease the boy and Hak was back to smiling and relaxing down onto the table next to Chanhee’s work. </p><p>“Must you always sit on the table?” </p><p>“Must you always ask questions you know the answers to?” </p><p>“Point taken.”</p><p>Hak looked down at Chanhee’s feet when his own swinging foot hit a empty aluminum can, the things rolling on the floor for a second before stopping. His gaze drew itself up to his friend, wrinkled slacks and haphazardly rolled sweater sleeves. 	</p><p>“How long have you been in here?” he asked. </p><p>Chanhee ignored him until Hak’s foot softly hit into his thigh. “I’m a good student,” was his response.  </p><p>“I know you are but that doesn’t answer me.” </p><p>Chanhee leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head and sighed. “What day is it?”</p><p>“And that’s not very reassuring,” Hak chided him. </p><p>“Well,” Chanhee drawled. “I can’t reassure you because I still don’t know what it is.”</p><p>“This morning? Did you not hear the-”</p><p>“Oh it’s Wednesday!” Chanhee almost shouted, a subconscious part of his mind reminding him not to make loud sudden noises in a room where a flinch and its responding keystroke could and had bombed entire factories and government operations. “So like a day and a half,” he reasoned.  </p><p>“Oh whatever, did you get the money?”</p><p>“What money?”</p><p>“Ha, ha” Hak mocked back. </p><p>"You know, he is so just unbelievably pretty and dense,” Chanhee mused. “Pretty dense and perfect in every way I need him to be.”</p><p>Hak nodded. “I could bank roll all my impulses off his trust.”</p><p>“Was that… was that a pun?” </p><p>“Maybe.” </p><p>“How dare you.”</p><p>Hak grinned even wider, a lurid pride seeping into its beaming brightness. “Now we just need-”</p><p>He was cut off by a weary looking Hwall, held by the scruff of his neck by Younghoon appearing in the doorway. </p><p>“You two,” Younghoon mouthed staring the two of them down and motioning with his thumb over his shoulder to the hall. </p><p>They followed, fully aware of the situation which could have led the other to seem vexed and knowing exactly why he of all people had shown up to clean the damage. Chanhee and Hak followed Younghoon, who was still dragging the most existentially exhausted Hwall on the heels of his shoes through the cyber department corridor and eventually arrived a study niche nestled in the corner of the floor. </p><p>“Alright,” Younghoon finally sighed, looking at the three seated, or rather thrown, on the sofa. “Which one of you fuckers convinced Juyeon to give them 100,000 dollars?”<br/>
Chanhee immediately pointed at Hwall who’s hand was extended to Hak who in turn was indicate Chanhee as the culprit. </p><p>“You’re not even going to try and deny it?”</p><p>“No,” Hwall spoke first. “Why would we?” </p><p>“Sangyeon didn’t raise no liars,” Hak tacked on, mostly just to see Younghoon’s crinkled eyebrow. </p><p>“I don’t know if that makes it better?” </p><p>“It does,” Hak assured him with a smile. </p><p>“Also,” Chanhee raised his hand to get the fourth year’s attention. “It was more like 70,000 dollars.” </p><p>“I just-” Younghoon gripping his temples. “What did you do with the money?”</p><p>“I would really appreciate it if you could please respect my personal boundaries and not ask such invasive questions.” </p><p>Hak swore Younghoon would have slapped Hwall had he not been on a self-appointed mission to help a naïve Juyeon. “Are you being serious right now?” he grit out instead. </p><p>“This hardly seems like the time to be joking around,” Hak declared in a monotone voice.  </p><p>“We would never do that,” Chanhee parroted. </p><p>“With all due respect for this inquisition, I humbly ask that you stop trying to solve everyone’s problems for them.”</p><p>“Hwall I swear to god!” the elder exploded. “What the hell else am I supposed to do? Fix my own problems? That’s ridiculous!” </p><p>The three boys sat in silence before Chanhee noticed something behind Younghoon, eyes zeroing in on the common space table. The funny thing was he was sure it was empty when they were unceremoniously ushered inside</p><p>“Oh my god wait are those cookies?” He murmured. </p><p>“Are you ignoring me?”</p><p>“Wait, I want one,” Hak added, standing up and moving past a bumbling Younghoon to grab the plate. </p><p>“Don’t just eat random cookies!” Younghoon yelled. </p><p>Hak turned to him with a stuffed mouth, crumbs falling from his lips onto the floor. “Why not?” </p><p>“Oh come on, they’re cookies,” Chanhee laughed and grabbed two of the plate Hak had now brought back over to them. </p><p>“Guys,” Hak interrupted them suddenly, falling onto the couch. </p><p>“What?” Hwall asked him when the other didn’t continue. </p><p>“Hmm?” Hak hummed back, head tilted unknowingly and smunching on another cookie. </p><p>“You just-”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Never mind, I guess?”</p><p>“Wait guys!” Hak threw out again. </p><p>“What?!” Younghoon groaned. </p><p>“Jungeun,” he said. “She’s against me! She’s my enemy! She’s wat…ching.” </p><p>Younghoon turned to Hwall. “Does he seem anymore paranoid than normal?” Younghoon </p><p>Hwall shrugged. “If you take uppers and downers simultaneously you achieve homeostasis.”</p><p>“I don’t think that’s how that works.”</p><p>“It wasn’t a question.”</p><p>“Do you think she’s here right now?” Chanhee gasped, turning to Hak. “With the proctor’s doppelgänger?”</p><p>“The proctor has a doppelgänger??” the other sputtered. </p><p>Chanhee leaned into Hak’s ear and whispered, “It’s not even the real proctor.” </p><p>They parted, one with a knowing smirk and the other with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. “Then where is she?”	</p><p>“Real one died in 2007.” </p><p>“Okay, what the fuck is in those cookies?!” Hwall demanded, stuffing one into his own face. </p><p>“No!” Younghoon screamed, slapping the younger’s head. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” </p><p>“I have a quiz today,” Chanhee slurred out, body slumping into the cushions in a languid ease, body completely limp now. </p><p>“I have a presentation,” Hak muttered, similarly melting to the floor, eyes fluttering closed. </p><p>“What the hell?” Younghoon breathed watching as Hwall too, fell into a slumber beside the other two. </p><p>He didn’t notice Jungeun and Yves stood in the hall, a mix of Psilocybin and DMT cookie batter still caked under their fingernails.</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. unwavering support</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hi, I couldnt think of a title - someone please help</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hey,” Kevin threw out, pulling open the propulsion club’s planning room door with an aggressive stung. “I got nothing going on,” he whined walking in and eyeing his friend, feet up on the desk and chair tipping dangerously back as the light overhead flickered, most likely from the incessant wear it experienced during club activities. </p><p>With no reply finding its way back to him, he continued, “Wanna hang out?”</p><p>“Can’t,” Changmin responded, fingers flying across his phone screen either texting or playing one of those overly saturated mobile games. “Too busy making terrible, awful decisions.”</p><p>“Okay… Can I join?” </p><p>Changmin looked up from his phone. “I don’t know, can you? </p><p>Kevin fell onto his knees and grabbed Changmin’s hands in his own, cradling them in a desperate beseech. “Please, I’m so bored. Save me with your destructive tendencies,” he pleaded.  </p><p>Changmin rolled his eyes and nudged the other off. “You sure do now you to make a boy feel loved.” </p><p>“Okay, but will you entertain me now?”</p><p>“What do I get out of it?”</p><p>“Unwavering admiration and respect.” </p><p>Changmin immediately doubled over in a full-bodied burst of laughter that shook his shoulders and rumbled his stomach. “Are you serious?”</p><p>“I’ll get Kanghyun off your back about the ‘appropriate blast radius’ thing,” Kevin offered. </p><p>“Okay, you got a deal, bud,” Changmin held out his hand. </p><p>Kevin looked down at his friend’s outstretched hand and the back up at him with a wicked smile. “This is a hugging household and you know it.”</p><p>“No, dear god please no,” Changmin wrestled his body upright and stumbled away. </p><p>“Bring it in, love,” Kevin coaxed, arms widely outstretched in the fairly small space. </p><p>Changmin groaned into the hug, shaking his body in retaliation as the other third year squeezed the fight out of him. </p><p>“So…” Kevin started after releasing him. “What are we doing? </p><p>Changmin straightened his shirt and smoothed down his tie before replying. “Helping Hak and Hyunjae make some Greek fire Molotovs.” </p><p>“Do they teach you that in engineering?” Kevin asked. “I mean I makes sense.” </p><p>“They actually took it off the syllabus like three years ago cause they got annoyed at having constantly having to fix the damage. Napalm is on the no-go list for recreational activities now.”  </p><p>“Don’t you guys have like a locker of incendiary starters?” </p><p>Changmin narrowed his eyes, turning from packing his backpack to study the other. “Who told you that?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Kevin shrugged. “Some weird first year.” </p><p>“Well,” Changmin sighed. “They’d notice if we took anything. Besides, I already have everything. I just need to meet up with Hak.” </p><p>“You know he wasn’t at dinner last night,” Kevin mused. </p><p>“And?”</p><p>“We go to dinner every Thursday. He has no other friends.” </p><p>Changmin waved him off. “Probably planning something or other.” </p><p>They ran into Sunwoo on their way and voluntarily (totally not coerced and/or blackmailed by a first year) gave the other their plans and dragged him (totally not themselves marched at threat’s point) with them to meet the others. </p><p>Sunwoo was staring at Changmin so intently the other slapping him on the back of the head. “What’s up with you.” </p><p>“I’m gonna miss you so much,” Sunwoo wistfully murmured. </p><p>“I’m a junior??”</p><p>“God bless,” Sunwoo continued. “You will be missed.” </p><p>“Where am I going??” </p><p>“I would say crazy,” Kevin thought aloud. “But you’re already there.” </p><p>Changmin slapped the other on the arm before promptly ignoring whatever Sunwoo had moments ago been rambling about in favor of waving excitedly at Haknyeon and Hyunjae who were sprawled across the grass of one of the school’s many encircled common gardens between the lofty stone structures. </p><p>Changmin shrugged off his backpack and it fell to the ground with a metallic thud. “Ready?” he asked with a wicked smile. </p><p>Sunwoo grabbed onto Kevin’s arm with an equally alarmed and intrigued expression. “What’s in the bag?” </p><p>“A surprise,” the other boy answered. “For Jungeun and friends incorporated.” </p><p>“Ah, the looney crew,” Sunwoo nodded knowingly. </p><p>Their friend group had, over the last couple of week since first engaging in the prank war to end all wars, come up with various jabs, digs, and practically based nicknames to refer to their self-proclaimed enemy encampment, most of which, for some reason, focus on references to ‘the looney crew’, ‘lunatics et. all’, and ‘the lunacy community’. Of course, Hak had never, and perhaps never would, stop referring to Jungeun as ‘the traitor’ but, well, old habits die hard. </p><p>“How many did you manage?” Hak asked. </p><p>Changmin shrugged. “About ten.” </p><p>“What does ‘about ten’ mean?” Hyunjae questioned. “Did you make ten or no?”</p><p>“I made nine,” Changmin started before leaning over to unzip his bag and pulling out one miniature grenade like device. “And then I also made this little baby one with the leftovers.” </p><p>“Oh my god,” Kevin snickered. “It’s for Sunwoo!” </p><p>“If it’s mine that means I can throw it at whoever I want,” the younger reminded him. </p><p>Kevin leaned away from him, attempting to hide his figure behind Hyunjae who just immediately pushed him back into the open again. </p><p>“No, it’s mine,” Hak corrected. “And they’re all going through that window right there,” he said pointing to the second story window of the back wall of the little square they were in. “All ten of them.”</p><p>The rather remarkable thing was that none of them had quite remembered the fact that Eric had played baseball for many years before coming to Genius until fifteen minutes into attempting to lob the rather heavy cylinders twenty feet into the air, which was, on their part, pretty poor planning. But, the second Kevin had riled Sunwoo up a bit, the kid could not be stopped and the first of their devices smashed through the glass of their desire location. A torment of their Molotovs blasted into the room, and a second after the fifth or sixth had made in through the portal, the entire building resounded with a gigantic explosion, smoke and fire billowing out the window and into the day. They all stood silent for a moment, ears ringing and eyes adjusting to the thick remnants of smoldering chemicals. </p><p>“What the FUCK did you do to them?!” Hak yelled, turning to Changmin.</p><p>“They didn’t have that much power in them, I swear!” the other defended. </p><p>“You don’t think…” Kevin started to say before letting his voice drift off, entranced by the building in front of them, burning and crumbling and chaotic. </p><p>“There’s no way,” Hyunjae breathed. </p><p>“Oh my god, Changmin!” Hak screamed in accusation. “YOU KILLED THEM?” </p><p>“ME?! HOW AM I THE ONLY ONE RESPONSIBLE?”</p><p>“Not my fault! Bye!” Sunwoo blurted out, throwing the cylinder in his hand to the earth beneath and booking it away from the explosive mess. </p><p>“Me neither!” Kevin threw out, quickly following the younger through the garden gate.</p><p>“Get back here you idiots!” Hyunjae yelled in vain to their disappearing backs. </p><p>Hak was stunned, body rigid and breathing erratic as he watched the smoke and fire continue to pour endlessly through the window, screams and crashing faintly making their way to the air outside amidst the torment. “I can’t believe we killed them,” He whispered to himself. “I didn’t mean to.” </p><p>“We have to go. Come on, Hak.” Changmin said, tugging his arm. </p><p>“Haknyeon,” Hyunjae grabbed the boy. “Jeju boy, we HAVE to go.” </p><p>The boy finally noticed a flood of students, sullied and shell-shocked filtering through the front of the building. He desperately flung his eyes around the throng of people before noticing Kanghyun carrying Jungeun out of the smoke, stumbling to keep the girl aloft as coughs racked his body. Hak breathed a sigh of relief before finally letting his two friends drag him away from the mess and into the cover of buildings and archways behind them, one last Molotov slipping from his loose fingers and into the grass below as softly and quietly as a flower petal carried by a summer breeze. <br/>---<br/>Jungeun, Jinsoul, Kang, Sujeong, and Hyunjin were all inside one of the booked study rooms of the Factory’s second non-departmental library, preparing what they assumed was a unique and unprecedented brand of prank which consisted of their own amateur manufactured bombs, helped by the curtesy of Kanghyun dragged by his pouting girlfriend Jinsoul. Jungeun had managed to enlist Hyunjin and Sujeong, an unfortunate, unintended victim of the fire eel incident, for manual labor. But, to be honest, both very readily and willingly came to her aid. They had been funneling Kanghyun’s perfected recipe for gunpower advance when Jungeun’s sarcastic rebuttal to a rather sassy Hyunjin has been cut off by the sound of glass shattering, the tiny fragments rocketing over the space and into the girl’s hair as a strange sound emitted from beneath the window sill and a small fire erupted. </p><p>“SHIT!” Kang yelled, throwing their bucket of gunpower toward the door at the opposite end of the room and running toward the flames, ripping the burning drapery down and attempting to smother the floor boards. </p><p>Before the rest of them could react, a second and third, what was now able to discerned as a Molotov, came barreling through the broken window and exploded on the carpet, instantly catching. Hyunjin and Sujeong both flinched and dropped what they were holding into the fire, trails of gunpowder igniting as they made contact and tracing the flames toward them. Jinsoul grabbed both girls and scrambled back and Jungeun wrestled off her blazer and threw it toward the end of the fire nearest their pile of gunpowder, desperately stomping it down.  The fire spread over the furniture, eating Jungeun’s jacket and the fabric Kang had thrown over it, and advancing slowly and slowly toward the bucket by the door. They all stood there waiting for the inevitable, tracking the seconds as it inched forward. </p><p>And then whole fucking room exploded. <br/>---</p><p>The last ring sounded through the phone before it clicked and a voice came on the other end, one which Jacob could hardly forget even if he tried, which of course he would never. There’s something so visceral amount missing your best friend’s voice and then hearing it, after months, garbled and jumbled slightly but all in all there. </p><p>“Hello?” Sangyeon called again, Jacob’s mind altered to the fact that it wasn’t the usual voice mail tag of missed connections and warbled hours between two lives on opposite ends of the globe. </p><p>“How’s Singapore?”</p><p>“It’s fine,” Sangyeon answered earnestly. “But that’s not why you’re calling.”</p><p>And it was so alike the elder to never stop looking after him. “No, really,” Jacob insisted. “Tell me about your job.” </p><p>“Jacob.” Sangyeon’s voice cut through the line and Jacob’s mind was immediately pulled back to when he was a freshman and a kind eyed sophomore had just taken it up himself to make sure he survived every week. Maybe it was too much effort to ever fight against that feeling. </p><p>“What’s wrong.” Sangyeon eventually asked him. </p><p>Jacob sighed, giving in to a vulnerable pity of actually relaying his worries to the other, who had always been there to listen and time had changed some things but never the important one. <br/>“I’m worried about the kids,” he admitted.  </p><p>Sangyeon laughed out a terse chuckle before collecting himself. “Yeah, I heard.”</p><p>“Oh god,” Jacob groaned. “It’s in the alumni magazine isn’t it?” </p><p>“You have to let people make their own mistakes.”</p><p>“Do you realizing how frustrating that is?!”</p><p>“Trust me,” Sangyeon drawled. “I remember.”</p><p>“God, it feels like you’ve been gone forever.” </p><p>“I graduated, baecop. I didn’t die,” Sangyeon laughed. </p><p>“Might as well have, loser,” the other huffed jockingly. “Leaving me with all the kids. Heck, Hyunjae’s a big part of the problem.”</p><p>“Well,” Sangyeon sighed. “You know what this means to Haknyeon.” </p><p>“It isn’t healthy,” Jacob reasoned.  </p><p>“Neither is his family, so just… let him do it.” </p><p>“It’s hard.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“I wish you were here.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“I miss you.” </p><p>“I-” Sangyeon started again before taking a beat to process the words. “I miss you, too,” he spoke back softly and Jacob could almost hear the smile which was inevitably pulling at the other’s lips.  </p><p>We all know reputations are worth more than anything. Privilege and expectation are, after all, two very experienced bedfellows. </p><p>“Thanks,” Jacob said softly. “I kind of just needing to talk to you. It helps.” </p><p>“I know,” Sangyeon said again, one last time. “Me too.”</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. There's nothing like spent fuel-rod storage</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Do I know this chapter title is stupid? yes.<br/>Could I think of anything else? no. no I could not.</p>
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    <p>Cloudless skies are eerie. They’re omens of a calmness which Genius kids never took in stride and certainly never met with undiscerning eyes. It was oddly warm for March, granted the end of the month loomed but a mere half a week away and the tiny island on the precipice of the arctic could only ever get so warm, and Eric wrestled off his sweater, now stuffy and sticky with sweat. He shouldered through the corridor, bag swinging off one shoulder and arms flinging out on the other side, vision obscured by the cashmere blend as he tugged it unceremoniously over his head. Narrowly missing the students which filed passed him, chattering and laughing and stomping their way through the school, he managed to free his gaze from a hunter green prison as he finally stumbled into the smoking longue beneath the dining hall, having habitually known the way after only seven months at the Factory. </p><p>“What are your thoughts on-” he started before fully gauging who was in front of him. </p><p>Younghoon sat perfectly straight, ever the picture of decorum- legs crossed, hands clasped, nursing the largest, blackest mug of coffee Eric had ever seen and at 4 in the afternoon no less- swiping through one of the many overnighted international newspaper lined at the entrance.  </p><p>“Oh?”</p><p>“Are you not happy to see me?” the older boy joked. </p><p>“No, I was just…” Eric paused, looking about the room, finding nothing he had been expecting to find, and gingerly perching himself on the arm of Younghoon’s chair. “I’m looking for Haknyeon.”  </p><p>Younghoon shrugged. “Just been me for a while now.” </p><p>“You know he’s been oddly…absent lately.”</p><p>“Probably scheming,” the elder muttered, finger poised at the top corner of the paper to flip it. </p><p>“’Scheming’ really?” Eric mockingly smirked. “What are you fifty?”</p><p>“Fine,” Younghoon huffed. “‘Plotting’,” he corrected in an overenunciated drawl, flipping the page over to a rather unseemly picture of a greying potbellied gentleman who was, statistically, probably a relation of someone currently at Genius; he was, after all, in the news. </p><p>“I don’t even know if that’s better.” </p><p>“Anyways,” Younghoon ignored him. “Let the kid breathe. I can help with whatever.” </p><p>“Can you?”</p><p>“Don’t you have a mid-semester pop quiz to study for?”</p><p>Eric tilted his head slightly, a crease just implied upon his brow. “What?”</p><p>“You’re taking hacking right? With Madame Mumba?”</p><p>“Yeah…”</p><p>“Lady loves throwing those out right before the semester ends.” </p><p>“Is it a pop quiz if you tell me it’s going to happen?”</p><p>“Is it resourceful if you reject the advantages of networking?” </p><p>Eric laughed softly. “No, I guess it isn’t.” </p><p>“So?”</p><p>“What, do you want me to go study now? I have like…10 hours left in my day.” </p><p>“No, I was just wondering what you need from Hak. Little dude’s been under a lot of stress with the whole QM thing.” </p><p>“I don’t know man, just had a question about life I guess.”</p><p>Younghoon’s eyebrow lofted on its own accord, dragged toward the vaulted wood trellises of the ceiling and he let the newspaper fold limply onto the table before him. “And you went to Hak?”</p><p>The look of indignant offense Eric gave him back was so visceral, Younghoon practically felt it slam into him. “He’s like the best kid in the clandestine department!” </p><p>The elder bristled. “Yeah, about that…”</p><p>“What about it?”</p><p>“Jungeun bumped him last week, maybe two weeks ago.”</p><p>“But I- but he… hasn’t he had that ranking since like last year?” </p><p>Younghoon exhaled as he unfolded and re-crossed his legs the opposite manner. </p><p>“How can she even-?” Eric began to continue before Younghoon placed a soft hand on the other’s knee with a tight smile. </p><p>“I wasn’t the one to tell you this,” Younghoon paused, “but Hak’s grandfather found out about the whole QM race or the ranking thing or whatever the fucking hell it is and he was not very pleased.” </p><p>“Well, what happened?”</p><p>Younghoon shook his head lightly. “I don’t know, man. Hyunjae, which is definitely not who I heard it from,” he added last part sternly pointing a sharped glare at Eric beside him, “wouldn’t tell me.” </p><p>Eric grumbled and began to pick his body back up from the chair’s arm, grabbing the bagged he had dropped and picking up his sweater from the floor. “Guess I’ll go find Jacob then,” he muttered. </p><p>“Hey! Wait? Are you seriously just going to ignore the whole ass wise man sitting right in front of you.” </p><p>“I’d call you a lot of things, Younghoon, but never that one,” he cheekily laughed out the last couple of words. 	</p><p>“Eric!” </p><p>For a second said boy thought the one in front of him had spoken, surely reprimanding him, but Younghoon’s lips were sealed. They both turned to the door and the sound of the voice, to find Hwall waltzing in, and yes the boy did waltz with a certain air of tempered grace in his step. </p><p>“Hey,” the boy nodded back, taking in the sight of the other. 	</p><p>Hwall stood before them, well no, now he was leaning against the wall leisurely in that same way models did in photoshoots which surely couldn’t have been comfortable but looked nothing but on him. He was cradling one hand in the other, a profuse amount of dark crimson blood just pouring out, tracing through the space between his fingers like little strings and dripping to the floor. When the conglomeration of girls, and good lord there were probably five or six of them, parted, the two boys on the other end of the room noticed he no longer was bearing five fingers on his left hand. </p><p>“Are you missing a pinky!?” Younghoon blurted, somewhat accusatory and entirely baffled. </p><p>Hwall shrugged as if unbothered and the girls cooed over him, muttering amongst themselves about how brave and pain tolerant he was. Over the shoulder of the girl’s flocked around him, gazes bent down in sympathetic pouts to his missing digit, Hwall’s cool demeanor crumbled as he mouthed, ‘Please help me. It hurts so much’ at Younghoon with child-like desperation in his eyes. </p><p>“Ladies,” Younghoon barked out, their backs jumping at the noise. “I would really appreciate some quiet in this so-called quiet space. Seems rather fitting, don’t you think?” </p><p>He received at least three death glares in response before the girls turned to Hwall in parting, blowing kisses and trailing hands down his uninjured arm. One went so far as to bend down and kiss the thumb of his left hand with a wink. Eric almost gagged. Once they were all finally out the door, Hwall’s last smirk fell and a grumpy pout to its place. </p><p>“Younghoon, it hurts,” he whined. “Fix it.” </p><p>“How does one lose a finger?” the elder asked him. </p><p>“I think he’s lucky,” Eric added in and the two gave him questioning glances, one full of more hostility than the other. “It’s, like, your least important finger.” </p><p>“I thought I was done with the crap when Changmin finally grew up and then you go and decide to do this engineering crap.”</p><p>Eric and Hwall simultaneously stifled some laughter. </p><p>“What?” Younghoon asked exasperated, having moved to wrap a cloth around Hwall’s missing pinky, which was rather remarkable that the injured boy had not think to do it himself.  </p><p>The first years exchanged a glance. </p><p>“You think Changmin’s grown up?” Eric finally chuckled. </p><p>Younghoon looked back to where he held Hwall’s bleeding hand. “Well Changmin never lost a finger.” </p><p>“It wasn’t my fault,” Hwall defended, shaking his shoulders in a defiant tantrum. </p><p>“Yeah, sure it wasn’t.” </p><p>Hwall opened his mouth again but Younghoon held up a hand effectively halting the other. “Want me to go get this bandaged or not? Some med kids owe me a favor.” </p><p>“Yes please,” Hwall murmured softly in response. </p><p>Eric grabbed his own and Younghoon’s bags, shoving one over each shoulder and draping his discarded sweater around his neck. </p><p>“Come on, you big baby,” the fourth year teased, opening the door for Hwall to pass through. </p><p>“I am NOT a baby,” Hwall whined. </p><p>“Dude,’ Eric butted in. “You kind of are.” </p><p>An affronted gasp came the other’s lips and a retort rested on the tip of his poised tongue before a girl, in a frenzy of hair, unbuttoned blazer flapping behind her, came around the passage curve in the tunnel which led to the old fuel rod storage, the spent U long since having been discarded of elsewhere. She bumped into Younghoon’s shoulder, making brief eye contact before scurrying off into the dark shadowed passage toward the stairs to the dining hall entrance. </p><p>“Know her?” Eric asked, staring at Younghoon as the elder gaze remained locked on the base of the stairs, girl gone but his mind still very much attached. </p><p>“That was Yein.” </p><p>“Who’s that?” Hwall asked his time. </p><p>Younghoon waved them off and they helped Hwall outside, supporting his melodramatic figure as he lumbered up the stairs into the blue sky. </p><p>“Let me just ask which lab we should go to,” the elder mumbled, pulling out his phone. </p><p>Eric and Hwall bickered back and forth about the exact incident which caused Hwall’s smallest finger to find a new home and the latter’s culpability in the incident for a few minutes as Younghoon waited for a reply. The sun streamed down, warming the stone slabs they sat upon, framing the tunnel entrance. It was calm and peaceful, except for the grieving boy staring daggers at his mangled hand. </p><p>Then, a boy emerged from the tunnel. This was, on all accounts odd, considering that they had just been in the smoking room where not a single other soul was left since their departure and the considering the fact they had just seen Yein emerge from an empty storage locker for seemingly no reason. Before any of the three could register the new appearance, the boy was cutting around the corner of the building, disappearing from their sight. Hwall and Younghoon barely even noticed the figure, only a peripheral glance at the outlined body as it passed by, but Eric has seen him. </p><p>“Guys?” he threw out, receiving some noncommitted hums in response. “Was that Hak?” </p><p>And maybe the skies weren't so calm as they appeared to be.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Escalation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>short update :)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Two boys were nestled in the window of a small room near the cyber department entrance, resting half way along the corridor leading to the engineering section of the compound, a deep rooted passage between the two buildings. A blazer was hung off one’s shoulder, an entire arm having escaped from one sleeve to rest, bare against the pane of glass. Soft snores drifted from his mouth, rolling along the glass towards the other boy who sat barely awake, drawing soft doodles on his hand with a slim paintbrush. Hak looked at Chanhee, the other’s neck bent as his body exhaustedly slumped in the corner, catching a quiet stillness before a morning lecture during this Friday’s unusually, ungodly early awakening. </p><p>A few students shuffled by, two girls he knew from Changmin’s engineering class and a boy he recognized from something or other but was too sleepy to place. It was oddly calm at this hour, only a rescheduled couple of lectures for engineering having been placed before the normal day’s start on account of a whole cyber fiasco consisting of some very realistic faked drone footage of the Factory which, for the first couple of hours after its discovery, drove the school’s administration batshit. Hak had forcibly removed his own body from the comfort of his bed to accompany his roommate to the dining hall that morning and then to their current location where the one in question, who actually had class Hak wanted to remind him, had fallen asleep. </p><p>His phone’s blaring ringtone abruptly resounded in their small niche, alerting both boys. Hak flinched and stumbled to turn off his phone as Chanhee rustled awake. Hak quickly stuffed the offending device into his pocket. </p><p>“Who was that?” </p><p>Hak looked over at Chanhee and pretended to busy himself with finding the doodling pen he dropped moments before. “No one,” he mumbled.  </p><p>Chanhee ignored the other and attempted to work, but it nagged at his mind each passing second and each paragraph read. He fidgeted in his seat with the incessant whisper of curiosity breathing down his neck. “You’ve been weird,” he eventually blurted, studying the other’s face for a reaction.  </p><p>Hak didn’t look up from his search, moving his legs about and leaning over the window sill to check the floor as well. “I started a prank war with the traitor, what did you expect me to be?” </p><p>“Less…” he grappled with whatever word he was looking for and settled on, “sentimental, I guess?” </p><p>Hak laughed breathily, leaning back in his chair, arms going to rest behind his head. “How the hell am I sentimental? I just blew up half the archive block.”</p><p>Chanhee continued to gaze at the other, a suspicious sense looming over his head and driving his mind forward as his friend obviously deflected for whatever reason. “You were worried.”</p><p>“If I was worried,” Hak drawled, “why would I be here right now planning another attack on my dear old rival and her friends?”</p><p>“Is she even out of the infirmary yet?” Chanhee asked, propping his body forward on his elbow and leaning a little across the wood to whisper into Hak’s space lest prying ears be perched nearby. “Did she even go?” </p><p>“Yeah, they just said she need to take it easy for a couple days so I’m waiting.” </p><p>Aha. Chanhee raised his eyebrow. </p><p>“What?” </p><p>“You visited her.”</p><p>Hak’s steely eyes met his before the monotonous response came out. “…I wanted to know if I had won yet.” </p><p>Chanhee hummed. “And you’re waiting because you’re not worried about her?” </p><p>Hak straightened his back and swung his legs around to the floor, standing with an exasperated huff and cracking his back in a languid stretch. “Yeah damn. Drop it, okay?” he meant to come out nonchalantly but his roommate wasn’t an idiot and he certainly picked up on the defensive hostility which stitched itself into Hak’s voice. </p><p>Chanhee was silent a moment, checking his watch and then too moving to stand beside his friend, shaking the sleep from his eyes with a gentle shake of his head. “Did you tell Hyunjae?” he asked. </p><p>Hak’s eyes set on the end of the corridor, as if rooted, and responded without turning to meet Chanhee’s eyes. “Why would he need to know</p><p>“No,” Chanhee mumbled. “I was just wondering.”</p><p>Hak slowly rotated his shoulder to face the other, a skeptical narrowing of his features adorning the swivel. 	</p><p>“He’s not Mr. Attrition for nothing,” Chanhee mused. </p><p>“I’m not going soft,” Hak added quickly. </p><p>His friend sighed with a knowing smile. “I didn’t say you were.” </p><p>“Don’t you have class?” </p><p>“Yeah, yeah I do. I’m gonna head out, but... hey-” Chanhee reached out to grab Hak’s arm as they boy started to leave. “Thanks, man.” </p><p>Hak waved him off and walked down the hallway into the stinging rays of a sunrise’s birth, entirely too bright and entirely too early to deal with. He almost ran into Juyeon outside, eyes squinted in the harsh light and missing the other’s figure in front of him. </p><p>“Oh, Hak?” the elder muttered, catching the small boy’s body in his own hands and steadying him. </p><p>“Still mad?”</p><p>“Wha- are you serious? No, I’m not really mad. I just- ugh. I just think you aren’t going about this the best way.”</p><p>“Then what is the best way?” </p><p>“Geez, I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you that… that I…”</p><p>The younger listened to Juyeon stumble over words before extracting himself from the fourth-year’s arms and levelling a irked apathy towards him. </p><p>“What are you trying to say?” he bit out, annoyed, angry, tired, perhaps a bit mournful even of a time when all this strain and all this drama didn’t have actual consequences. </p><p>Juyeon’s face fell at the younger’s tone. “Oh, it’s nothing important,” he said before plastering a fake smile on his face. “Also, completely unrelated, if you see Hwall, tell him I’m dead,” he tried to joke. </p><p>“Yeah whatever, Juyeon. Bye.” </p><p>And Hak was gone.  </p><p>---</p><p>Hyunjae’s eye popped open as his arm was tugged roughly in his sleep. He pulled it towards him in an effort to disentangle it from the sheets it was no doubt trapped in, but felt the comforter resist. He pulled again, attempting to extract its wedged position behind his back. A gentle hand laid on his wrist and he realized he wasn’t dreaming. Wait...</p><p>“Jinsoul??” he breathily whispered out, blinking his eyes open to a well-known face filling his vision. </p><p>His feet were cold. His feet were wet? He looked down to see the forest floor resting snuggly against his bare toes, moving them in the dirt to make sure it was real. He then noticed the sensation of rugged bark against his back, the forest pine filling his nose, and the canopy of leaves overhead blocking the moon. </p><p>“What is-”</p><p> </p><p>Jinsoul tugged his arms further back around the tree, the rope around his wrists digging into the meaty flesh at his wrists and stingingly pinching his skin. Hyunjae struggled against her hold, instantly feeling a cold wash of realization wake him up. </p><p>“Jinsoul, what the hell?!” he yelled, gazing about himself to see Sunwoo, Kevin, Changmin, and Hwall strung up in the trees, mouths gagged and bodies trashing about as they hung from their ankles in the air, suspended above head. </p><p>The girl didn’t response and continued to knot the rope tightly, Yves moving over silently to pull it taught. </p><p>“Hyun-” a gritty voice called out and he turned to see Hak writhing on the forest bed, hands tied, legs ties, a chain around one ankle clinking as he struggled. </p><p>Jungeun kicked Hak in the stomach, the boy’s cough cutting off his own call. </p><p>“JINSOUL, WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?!” Hyunjae screamed. </p><p>Her face came into his view again. “I totally didn’t want to do this but a little part of me isn’t sorry at all. Is that bad?” she asked him. </p><p>“What?” Hyunjae grappled for a second before haltering at the cannister in her hands. “FUCK!” he screamed as she maced him directly in the face. </p><p>He was too busy sputtering and groaning, hysterically attempting to free his hands to claw at his burning eyes to notice the chain around his ankle being pulled and his body swiftly upending and leaving the earth. By the time he had ceased the disorienting swing as his body adjusted to its position, he blearily blinked tears out of his ears and was able to make out the shadowed figures of five girls walking into the woods. </p><p>“Jungeun!” Hak called out and one girl stiffening and stopped in her tracks. </p><p>She didn’t turn. She didn’t acknowledge she had heard the boy expect for the halt in her step, a barely there response to the blatant anger radiating from the other’s whole body. </p><p>“There used to be a lot of chivalry in backstabbing,” Hak grit out. </p><p>She heard it. Hyunjae knew she heard it, knew she had listened and processed and taken it in stride. But it was only a second more she stood there before her back receded into the shadows of the wood, leaving Hak to bear the reverberations of his words alone.</p>
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<a name="section0014"><h2>14. A New Dawn, A New Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>fun fact: this chapter is 1984 words long which i just thought was fun<br/>not so fun of a fact: i took a long time to upload and I sincerely apologize my dudes </p><p>(also Haknyeon is my baby and I really need to stop making him hurt but it's gonna be awhile)</p>
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    <p>Chanhee noticed the absence of his roommate first thing when he woke up on Friday morning and called Jacob to see if he knew where Hak was. This had the effort of a confused and sleepy Jacob, still yawning over the phone as he shoved his body down into a library chair, mentioning that no he did not and, in fact, Eric had been hanging around him since he left the dorm because the younger could not find Sunwoo. </p><p>“You were my second option, but hey that’s still pretty good,” the younger had told him, trailing behind the fourth year on the way to the library. </p><p>Jacob then had then gone looking for Hyunjae, already propelled by a sinking suspicion of what exactly they could be doing, and discovered the boy’s absent status curtesy of a distracted Kino and Vernon who were rather overzealously completing an economics project due on Monday. Chanhee had gone himself to find Younghoon, his only bastion of sanity and personal cyber tutor, who informed him Kevin had been gone all morning and missed their breakfast plans. Eric, after hearing from Chanhee and Jacob of both the disappearance of Hyunjae and Kevin, went on his own way to class and discovered a missing Hwall, and the aforementioned absent Sunwoo, from his Basics of Hacking course. </p><p>By 9:23 that morning, Eric, Chanhee, and Jacob had discovered that coincidence surely did not extend to the radio silence of 5 of their friends and when BX and Gon ran into them clustered around the main courtyard and announced they were searching for Changmin. The unlikely duo of one sharpened to angular points and the other a fluff of soft cheeks bore matching expressions of confusion and surprise explained Changmin had not shown up for the Propulsion Club meeting, that had sealed the proverbial coffin shut. Luckily, one needn’t look far in this case for missing comrades. </p><p>They came crawling out the woods at daybreak, nails dirty, undershirts wrinkled and sullied beyond repair, a few signet rings lost to the endless creep on elbows and knees through the brush and twigs and pine needles. Hak may have been bearing the worst of the wear, curtesy of the traitor herself, had Kevin not miraculously been the first to extract himself and tumble down the 10 or so feet to the ground. It was eerily silent save for the grunts and groans emitted from the forest which encircled the island’s perimeter in a thick green fence of wood. Hyunjae stumbled out first, catching not the eye of a single flurrying soul as they darted between class. He was holding Sunwoo up, arm wrapped around the younger’s waist in a vice. Hwall had somehow ended up supporting the shell-shocked Kevin and Hak on either side, more in a jumble of limp limbs than anything else but he liked to think it was helpful. The second Changmin fell through the tree line and onto the manicured grass surrounding the school’s gate, an oddly shrill pitch emitted from his bicep. </p><p>By the time they reached the gate, a landing party of 7 people waiting including Juyeon who was unceremoniously dragged along and BX and Gon who had followed the tracking implant their grade of engineering students had after a significant portion of them had gone missing second year. General consensus was they escaped and founded their own syndicate somewhere in the Strait but the rumors only got more and more creative as the months passed. </p><p>“What happened?!” Jacob yelled, rushing forward and pulling Sunwoo out of Hyunjae’s and into his arms. “What the hell were you guys doing in there?!”</p><p>“Why do you assume it was our choice?” Kevin threw back from Hwall’s side, slumping onto the increasingly disgruntled boy who pushed him off and sent the other’s body careening onto the grass. </p><p>Younghoon came forward to offer Kevin a hand up which the other ignored in favor of writhing and whining upon the ground so the elder plopped down beside him silently. </p><p>“I’m fine,” Sunwoo grumbled from Jacob’s arms, now being smothered on the backside by Eric’s entire body wrapping around his. </p><p>Juyeon came forward to inspect Hak’s injuries from where the younger rested against Hwall, who was miraculously still allowing him to do so. “This is ridiculous,” he mumbled. </p><p>“Dude!”, “Q!” Chanhee and Gon approached a now dizzily swaying Changmin before he fell forward into Chanhee’s arms with rolled eyes and fluttering lashes. </p><p>“We should probably get the boys inside,” Juyeon added, a brief point of eye-contact with Hyunjae eliciting a small nod from the fourth year. </p><p>Chanhee had immediately taken Changmin to the school’s infirmary, followed by BX and Gon who insisted they be there to help carry their club treasurer across campus which left the remaining boys to squeeze into Hyunjae and Younghoon’s dorm room, the latter stuffing himself onto his bed with Juyeon crouched on the end as Kevin sprawled his body onto the couch over<br/>
Sunwoo and Hwall’s laps. Jacob was still attached to Eric, adamantly refusing to let the first year away from his grasp. </p><p>Hyunjae leaned into his headboard, Hak at his side, before speaking. “I think It’s time to draw lines.” </p><p>“Let’s FUCKING GO!” Younghoon yelled back which resulted in a plethora of surprised stares. </p><p>“No offence,” Hak started, “but you were the last person I expected to say yes.”</p><p>“I AM SO READY!” Kevin called out, jostling his body, and the two first year’s beneath him, slightly in excitement. </p><p>A smile came up on Hak’s face. “And that’s the one I was expecting.” </p><p>Sunwoo tilted his head to the side and looked to tangle of boys seated upon the Persian rug, right on the edge of a large square pattern which traversed the length and up again, all red and gold and regal . “What about Jacob?” he asked. </p><p>“Uhhhh…”</p><p>“That’s fine,” Kevin waved Sunwoo off, nodding to Jacob. “He’s a pacifist.” </p><p>Jacob smiled back with an awkward thumbs up. </p><p>“Wait,” Hwall raised his hand after wrestling to extract it from beneath Kevin’s legs. “What am I getting out of it? Why would I help you when I spent all night involuntarily in the woods?” </p><p>Hak leaned forward on his knees, drawn up to his chest, resting his elbows across the top like a small table for his chin. “Because you love me?” he offered. </p><p>Hwall simply narrowed his eyes at the elder without a word. </p><p>“Because,” Hyunjae cut in wearing a sinisterly taught grin, levelling his gaze on the first year strapped between the tufted leather cushions and a wiggling mass of man. “I’ll cut off your other pinky if you don’t? </p><p>Hwall seemed to consider the fourth year’s words for only a moment, a thumb and forefinger bracketing his chin. “Fair point. I’m in.” </p><p>Juyeon stilled on the foot of the bed. “You lost a pinky?”</p><p>Hwall merely shrugged back in response to the elder’s quirked eyebrow and flashed his four fingered hand to the other: glistening rings, perfectly trimmed cuticles, knuckle stump and all. </p><p>“My favorite first year?” Kevin asked, only looking at Eric to which Hwall and Sunwoo seemed to take no apparent offense. “What do you think?” he added. </p><p>Eric stared blankly back at him, blinking into the silence like a lost puppy. </p><p>“I’ll take that as a yes!” </p><p>Eric sighed, apparently having resigned himself to both the fact that Jacob was not going to let him out of his sight any time soon and that he was indeed being roped into whatever it was Hak and Hyunjae had planned. “I’ll ask Hwiyoung,” he added in a monotone huff. </p><p>“No!” Sunwoo suddenly jumped up, causing Kevin to roll towards Hwall’s side of the couch and the two careened into a head on collision which left one grumbling and the other rubbing a sore temple with an exaggerated pout. </p><p>“He’s crazy!” Sunwoo continued, looking between Jacob and Eric in a desperate plea. “I swear!” </p><p>Younghoon motioned a pouting Kevin over and extracted himself from his reclined position amongst dozens of fluffed white pillows to entangle the younger boy in a comforting gesture. </p><p>“God,” Juyeon scoffed from the corner. </p><p>“Anything to add?” Hyunjae asked him, sitting up, shoulder no longer brushing Hak’s in a faint encouraging warmth, a pointed question aimed with less than innocent intent. </p><p>Hak shifted at the absence of my friend and glanced at Juyeon barely a whispers length away from Younghoon and Kevin’s sock clad feet and then at Hyunjae’s profile shining softly against the dark red walls. The elder’s side silhouette in the harshly bright lights seemed a bit like a divine vision and then Hak thought it might be all chalked up to the sure concussions they no doubt had and a vague notion of a hazy fuzz which was swimming around his head. </p><p>“No,” Juyeon drawled leisurely, the air in room growing stiff. “I just don’t understand what the hell you’re all thinking.”</p><p>Sunwoo and Kevin paused from their fidgeting, pulling the latter’s phone down from their vision and darting their eyes to Juyeon. </p><p>“Why are you being so annoying?” Hyunjae demanded, the other quieting down at the sudden aggressiveness of both the fourth year’s posture. “First the leeches? Now this? What’s going on with you?”</p><p>“I didn’t think it would get this far!”</p><p>“You didn’t think it would get this far?!” Hyunjae balked. “What did you think would happen when one of your best fucking friends was attacked? When he came to me with the same doubts we’ve all been trying to heal for over a year? When he broke down in front of me because SOMEONE HE TRUSTED convinced him he’s a disappointment?!” </p><p>“Hyun-” Jacob started. </p><p>“Get off your goddamn high as shit horse, Juyeon,” the other cut him off. </p><p>“This is stupid,” Juyeon said in response. </p><p>“He doesn’t think so!” Hyunjae screamed back, pointing at a voiceless, soulless Haknyeon sitting rigidly alone against the heavy headboard. </p><p>“Hey, man, this isn’t-” Younghoon leaned across the space between their beds, noticing the tension. </p><p>Hyunjae brushed off the other’s concerned look and frowned at Juyeon. “Who are you to not support your fucking friend because you don’t understand what it means it him?”</p><p>“You know what,” Juyeon huffed. “Believe what you want to believe.” He seemed done before the quirk of his shoulders stiffening indicated he had clearly been attempting to hold something back. “For the record,” he continued. “This is idiotic and you’re all going to get yourselves killed.” </p><p>“Oh my god, you’re so fucking MORAL! Is that what you want me to say? That you’re better than the rest of us with all your fucking lofty as shit conscious.”</p><p>They all held their breathes watching Juyeon’s tightened jaw flew, his shoulder now stiff. Hyunjae’s gaze was so sharp, it cut straight through the air before him and settled itself upon the other like a poised gun, trigger ready, resting upon one’s temple. Eric and Jacob were whispereing back and forth between themselves quietly on the floor, Sunwoo and Kevin each seemed routed to the spot scared to flinch or breath lest it break the careful air resting on the precipice of a few words. </p><p>“Juyeon, I think we should-” Younghoon attempted to mediate again before the other abruptly stood from the bed and walked toward the door, wordlessly throwing it open. </p><p>“Juyeon?” Hwall called to the door but was met with no response. </p><p>“How are you any better than Jungeun right now?” Hyunjae yelled out at the third year, knowing it was uncalled for, knowing it was a dirty question.<br/>
Juyeon slammed the door shut so hard, the room was shaking long after he left. </p><p>Hyunjae turned back around to the quiet second year, so small and defenseless where he nestled into the other’s bedding. “Hak, I…” </p><p>“It’s okay,” the younger responded through barely moving lips in the now still space. “Not everyone thinks I'm worth it,” he muttered.</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Certainly Something</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This one's called angst city :)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Please tell me that Juyeon was wrong and you didn’t actually string a bunch of boys up in the woods reverse Salem Witch Trial style.” </p><p>Jungeun stopped in the middle of her sentence, smiling sheepishly at Sujeong before the other girl moved from the wall and patted her shoulder as she passed down the hallway. Jungeun turned back to Haseul, slouching further into the wall with a smirk. “Well hello to you too, dear friend.” </p><p>“Jungeun, really?”</p><p>“It’s such a lovely day, don’t you think? Sujeong was just telling me about this party Y and Jinhoo and Sangho decided to throw last night which ended up with… I think four- yeah four kids in that weird slightly radioactive pool behind the engineering building. You know the one that-”</p><p>Haseul held firm. “Did you honestly?” she asked the younger again. </p><p>“Yeah,” Jungeun shrugged, her backpack falling from her shoulder to dangle on the crux of her folded elbow. “And?” </p><p>“What are you doing?” she asked. </p><p>“Why?” the younger perked up. “Wanna help?” </p><p>“No,” Haseul sighed, wearily eyeing the students filing out of the classroom Jungeun had recently exited. “That’s not what I-” she stopped and shook her head. “I’m not here to join your vendetta.” </p><p>“It’s not a vendetta,” Jungeun laughed, pausing to nonchalantly wave at two of her classmates as they walked by. “It’s justice,” she simply said when she met the fourth year’s gaze again, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world. </p><p>“Good lord,” Haseul mumbled to herself. “When the hell did this happen?” </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You used to be a lot more tame,” the elder tried to explain.  </p><p>Jungeun pushed up from her lean to stand straight in front of the other. “Well I have to defend myself somehow,” she defended.  </p><p>“Defend yourself?” </p><p>“Hak’s planning something. I know it.” </p><p>“This isn’t a war, Jungeun. It’s a title: a made-up title.” </p><p>“You ever tell Taeyang that?” Jungeun scoffed. </p><p>“Yeah,” Haseul said. “All the time.” </p><p>Jungeun huffed, watching the students filing through the corridor in her periphery. “Listen,” she started, shrugged off Haseul’s inquisition. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.” </p><p>The elder looked defeated. “That makes two of us, I guess.” </p><p>“Was there anything else or…?” Jungeun motioned down the hall with her free arm. </p><p>“Yeah whatever, you can go,” the elder acquiesced. </p><p>Was it always this hard, she thought watching Jungeun’s high pony tail bounce with her steps, skirt swishing against her thighs as she bounded away with an easy carefree confidence that would be enviable under different circumstances. Of course Genius kids took no shit but names and broke nothing but bones and rules. But this, this whole situation seemed different. Was it about the Quartermaster at all? Really? It hardly seemed like it anymore. It seemed like a personal affliction to the other’s existence, mutual if not slightly more charged on Jungeun’s side. Maybe it was best to let them sort it out themselves. Maybe, she’d get burned trying to put out the fire. </p><p>Jungeun, on the other hand, fire safety be damned and carried to hell in a handbasket, was fuming through the clandestine corridor and straight through the large double door into the yard. She paused in the sea of flowing bodies on her way to the bio-chem department before recalling Yein had a free period and then she booked it to the other’s dorm. As she turned blindly in the middle of the trafficked footpath she bumped into a familiar tuft of red hair. Sunwoo spun with a smile on his lips before he was just who it was. </p><p>Sunwoo opened his mouth and then closed it again, not uttering a single sound but staring at her amongst the throng of scurrying tweed and cashmere, wafts of floral perfumes surrounding them. </p><p>“You know he’s a good guy,” Sunwoo eventually said. </p><p>“Huh?” she managed to elicit. </p><p>A brief burst of giggles came from her left and then dissipated just as quickly, the sound so out of place in the moment but all the same reminding her that some were oblivious, some were ignorant and non-caring to the battle she was fighting. They knew the title, they knew Taeyang, and they knew the networking and the privilege it granted him but not much more than that. </p><p>“Haknyeon,” Sunwoo corrected. “He’s a good person. There aren’t a lot of them here.” </p><p>“I have to go,” Jungeun muttered. </p><p>She had just begun moving toward Halakart Hall when a hand darted out and tapped her back. She paused, hell knows why she paused but she did, and was met with innocently pleading eyes on the first year’s face. </p><p>“Don’t go too far,” he added and then he was swiveling around and continuing on his way, disappearing into the sea of milling students. </p><p>‘He’s a good person’ kept rolling around in her head as she walked. The first year had said it without an ounce of doubt or hesitation. Was it loyalty or was it faith? </p><p>“You will not believe the conversation I just had with-” she started before taking in the scene before her. </p><p>Hak stood before Yein’s dorm room door, loose smile and relaxed shoulders, the faintest bits of a chuckles melting into the warm air around the two as she approached. </p><p>“What the fuck is this?” Jungeun exclaimed. </p><p>Hak’s head shot over to her so fast she was sure the boy would het whiplash. He awkwardly raised his hand to grab the back of his neck with a staccato rub. “Uhh…” </p><p>“What the fuck are you doing here?” Jungeun demanded. “Are you dragging Yein into this?! Oh my god,” she breathed. “What are you doing? Are you attacking my friends?!” </p><p>“What? No! I-”</p><p>“Why the hell did you think it was okay to come to her room?”</p><p>“Jungeun, stop,” Yein grabbed the girl’s wrist. </p><p>“What’s he doing here?”</p><p>“He’s… ummm…”</p><p>“Is he trying to blackmail you?”</p><p>“No,” Yein cut her off quickly.  </p><p>Hak just scoffed but offered no answer. </p><p>“You,” Jungeun pocked his chest. “get the fuck away from my friends.” </p><p>“Really?! You just tied up half of mine in the middle of the woods and you have the gall to tell me to stay away from ‘your’ friends?” </p><p>Jungeun didn’t miss the way he put air quotes around your and the lack of a surprised response from Yein at that gesture. </p><p>“What do you mean ‘your’?’ she asked, placing the same motion around the word. </p><p>“Not everything is about you, Jungeun.” </p><p>“Yeah. It kind of is,” she mocked. “When you’re stalking my best friend.” </p><p>“Why can’t she be my friend too?” Hak blurted out and all three of them halted. 	</p><p>“There is no way in hell Yein is dumb enough to be friends with you. She’s on my side.” </p><p>“Oh really,” Hak taunted. “Why don’t you ask her that?” </p><p>“I’m so confused…” Yein murmured under her breath. </p><p>“What do you mean you’re confused?” </p><p>There was a fury in Jungeun’s voice, that Yein had never heard before so much so that it left her baffled at any idea of how to respond. Jungeun had never confronted Yein, or anyone as far as she knew, with the sort of unbridled animosity that now surrounded her figure. Yein remembers when her friend had first been bumped down on the rankings and the inexcusably confident ambition that it was met with. Jungeun was driven and strong and loyal and not… not angry, not ever truly irrevocably angry. Of course the whole QM jockeying had left everyone in their extended friend group bristling around the edges of their actions and slightly worse for wear when falling to sleep at night, but it wasn’t malicious, never malicious. There were lines, even for Genius kids. </p><p>“I-”</p><p>“We’re friends,” Jungeun continued before Yein had the time to get one word in. “We’re fucking best friends. What the hell are you talking about?”</p><p>“Don’t yell at her,” Hak interrupted and only then did Yein remember he was still there beside them in the hallway, having been so preoccupied with the fuming Jungeun to even really feel the ground beneath her feet. </p><p>Jungeun whipped around to the offending voice. “Why the hell do you care?!” </p><p>“Because…” he started to reply before his eyes darted to Yein as if asking for her permission to continue. </p><p>“Okay, seriously what the heck is going on?” Jungeun demanded. </p><p>Hak moved to answer her before Jungeun held out a hand to shush him. “No,” she stopped him and looked to Yein expectantly. “I want you to tell me.” </p><p>“Because he’s…” Yein finally shouted. </p><p>“What?!” Jungeun yelled back. “What is he?!”</p><p>“I don’t… I don’t know!” </p><p>“What the fuck, Yein?”</p><p>“Jungeun leave her out of this,” Hak stepped in. </p><p>“WHY?!” Jungeun growled in frustration. “Why do you suddenly care what she is and isn’t a part of?” </p><p>Yein and Haknyeon glanced between themselves for a second, a while lifetime of excuses and confessions hanging between them in that one moment. And Jungeun saw it, she was the way they looked at each other with a such an ease, such a naked vulnerability of secret sharing. Jungeun knew that look. Jungeun used to know more than she would now admit. </p><p>“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she murmured, a half scoff a half terrified breath of realization. </p><p>She looked at Hak and noticed his untucked button down, rumpled on the ends, buttons about his neck hanging open, the fabric barely dusting his clavicle where his tie most certainly should have been hanging. She turned to Yein and saw the girl’s bare feet resting on the hallway floor, shoeless, sockless, bare naked feet. </p><p>“Jungeun,” Yein reached for her. “I was going to tell you.” </p><p>“Oh Jesus Christ,” the other girl shifted back. “You two are…” </p><p>Hak heaved an exasperated air of his chest, viscerally ejecting the vexation from his lungs and throwing it into the air like a rocket. “It’s none of your business what Yein or I do,” he responded tightly.  </p><p>“EXCEPT WHEN YOURE DOING EACH OTHER!” Jungeun practically shrieked, her vocal cords throwing out the words before her mind knew she was saying them. </p><p>Yein flinched at her words and suddenly looked down to her shoes. </p><p>“What on earth?” Jungeun continued, except when Yein looked up it wasn’t directly at her. </p><p>Hak and Jungeun were completely focused on each other, not a single ounce of attention even diverging from the awkwardly intimate exchange of gazes. </p><p>“Jungeun…” Yein tried to her friends attention in a soft pleading voice. </p><p>“Really Hak?” the other threw out, ignoring the small voice. “Her?” </p><p>“Yeah what about it?’ he bit back. </p><p>“Are you guys in a relationship or some shirt or are you just-”</p><p>“Jungeun, stop!” Yein yelled and they quieted, waiting “It’s nothing! It's all so pointless and stupid!” </p><p>Hak froze in place processing the words. “I’m nothing?” he asked her quietly.</p><p>“That’s not what I-”</p><p>“Yeah!” Jungeun taunted, rolling off of Yein’s words. “You are! Real fucking stupid.” </p><p>Yein’s face fell. “Hak, I-”</p><p>“It’s nothing, Jungeun,” Hak sternly told the girl, repeating Yein’s own words without glancing at her. “We were just messing around.” He paused to look at her Yein for a second. “Or we were,” he added. </p><p>“Good,” Jungeun threw back. </p><p>“Yeah, good,” Hak parroted. “Are we done here? Can I go?” </p><p>“Be my guest,” she motioned to the stairs. </p><p>Yein attempted to grab his arm as he left but he extracted himself so swiftly and practically threw himself down the staircase in a flurry of stamping feet, leaving her fingers grasping at nothing. </p><p>“Yein,” Jungeun called out to the other as she stood staring at the empty hall before them. “You should be more careful with your company.” </p><p>Said girl spun around with a murderous despondency stuck part way between the two as if her mind and heart were battling for the correct response. Before she said anything else she would regret, she too left Jungeun standing alone in a chilled doorway. As soon as she reached the railing, hand just brushing against the banister, Jungeun’s voice met her before her first foot fell. </p><p>“Don’t you dare follow him,” she said. </p><p>“Why would I?” Yein bit back “It was nothing.” </p><p>And then she was gone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Dripping, Slipping Crystal</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I promise the next chapter will not be angst ridden</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The economics building was a zenith of simpler times, the luxury of old money carved into the ornate crown molding of a wood paneled room built to withstand nuclear Armageddon. It sat beneath the government department on the ground and basement floors, the remnants of an old Genius with a modern sparkling glass laden government addition capping its stone top like a haphazard homage to the passage of time. It might surprise people to know that economics, clandestine, and engineering were the three oldest original sections of the Factory, each with their own fortified safe havens frozen in time amongst the glittering medical and bio-chem facilities, the newest expansion of cyber, and of course the school’s most famous discipline: government. But there was just something about economics. It built Rome and was the reason Carthage acquired a target on its back. It was why Florence built the Renaissance and Japan emerged a powerhouse of the 21st century. And maybe more than that, the mythos and the unparalleled influence of Sea Powers founded on cultural economics as flexible and fluid as the oceans which surrounded them, the Factory was an homage to economics. It was, after all, an island. </p><p>There were some passages in the economics building which the government kids, and even more surprisingly their clandestine neighbors, didn’t know existed: little secrets of tunnels and hollowed walls which connected unseen rooms and surreptitious little sneak-aways. They’d set up a speak easy if they knew how to make cocktails like the bio-chem students but alas, some professions are better left to the professionals. </p><p>Jinsoul wiped the faint particles of brick dust from her shoulder, the cashmere sweater clinging to the offensive particles like a net. After windy days the old walls were often jostled enough to unearth the movement of days past within the walls and send little bits of material raining down on the heads and the bodies of the economics department as they traversed inside the building’s bones like rats or mice or roaches. She squeaked upon the back of a bookcase opening to her usual study room, one she shared with her tiny conglomerated economics family which they had claimed as theirs her sophomore year. Well, she had claimed it with Hyunjae, her platonic husband with she was not speaking at the moment on account of Factory drama and a staunch code of females before frail males. She moved to sit down at the long wooden table beneath the long unused hearth of a fireplace which more properly belonged in an English estate from the 1880s nestled in the countryside amongst sodden grassy knolls. There was but a single soul gracing its presence making the notable absence of her favorite self-proclaimed child glaringly apparent. </p><p>“Where’s Moonbin?” she asked, setting down her bag on the surface and swinging her legs around, ankles crossed, to meet her thigh with the thick leg of the table. </p><p>“Stopping Minchan,” Vernon mused, scribbling away at the paper in front of him.</p><p>Jinsoul raised her brow at the younger econ student, the purr of curiosity tickling the back of her throat as she spoke. “From doing what?” </p><p>Vernon stopped and then blinked his mind into realization, eyes widening at who he found seated before him. “Ummmm…”</p><p>“Vernon,” Jinsoul reprimanded.  </p><p>“Trying to find Kevin,” he replied.</p><p>She crossed her arms over her chest with an unamused glare. “Because?”</p><p>“He thinks… Minchan thinks Kevin… doesn’t really understand what’s going on,” Vernon reluctantly explained speaking the words like he was just learning their pronunciation, over enunciating and selecting them like unpinned grenades or kerosene soaked bullets. “But…” he continued, “Moonbin obviously agrees with Kevin… and so he’s trying to stop Minchan.”  </p><p>Jinsoul, elbow propped upon the table like a polished silver candlestick, plated her chin upon her hand with a deliciously intrigued smile. Something about the women at Genius, Vernon thought, something about any of the girls there had him feeling like the Clandestine department secretly roused them from sleep in the middle of the night their first day there and taught them the wily sport of female charms and seduction. </p><p>“And what’s Kevin doing?” she coaxed the boy. </p><p>Vernon knew he was done the moment he told her about Minchan and gave in to whatever match she had started: a gentle, submissive acceptance that he would eventually be beat and might perhaps miss out on playing the confusingly convoluted game at all. </p><p>“Attempting to stop Hyunjae from doing something stupid,” he answered, setting his pen down. </p><p>Jinsoul laughed, a breathy unrestrained laugh. “When is he not doing something stupid?</p><p>The boy pouted back at her, only the slightest protrusion of his lower lip indicating as much. “Hey, I like to think he’s only an idiot like half the time.” </p><p>“That’s a lot of time,” the elder reminded him with a knowing smile. “What exactly is he doing?” </p><p>“Well,” Vernon started and then stopped with a sigh. He rolled his neck over to make eye contact with her and instantly regretted it. “Hyunjae and Minchan don’t want me to tell you that,” he divulged. </p><p>Jinsoul released her forefinger from beneath her chin and tapped it lightly against her skin one, twice, and three times with a hum. “And what about Kevin?” </p><p>“He does not want Hyunjae to be doing what he is currently planning on doing.”</p><p>Jinsoul didn’t respond, instead letting the younger boy stew and squirm under her laser of attention like a creeping panther in the black night circling her prey. </p><p>“I have a strong sense Minchan found and somehow detained Kevin but I’m also not sure because Moonbin was in charge of stopping Minchan from finding Kevin from finding Hyunjae and we all  know Moonbin is a stellar tracker,” the poor boy rambled. </p><p>“So,” Jinsoul mused. “Hak is planning something.” </p><p>“I don’t know,” Vernon groaned, dropping his head down to the table, a thwack of skull meeting wood before he grunted into its surface in pain. “I was just supposed to-” his muffled voice cut out.</p><p>“Supposed to what?” Jinsoul pressed him. </p><p>He grumbled into the table again, the smallest wisp of his exhaled air ruffling his notebook pages next to him. </p><p>“Supposed to what, Vernon?” </p><p>He picked his head up with an exhausted whimper. “Distract you…” </p><p>“Oh, fucking hell,” she threw out and was out of the room faster than the words could leave her mouth, bag and sweater discarded on the floor of the room, the only markers of her presence there. </p><p>The miraculous thing was Moonbin had indeed found Minchan. The third year had hunted down his classmate with a fervor that could only be described as uncharacteristically vicious. This, of course, meant that Kevin would, under all logical progressions and assuming the absence of any unknown parties in the matter, have the possibility of uninhibitedly finding Hyunjae. Such a mission did not sound like a hard task at all considering how boisterously apparent the elder had been as of late, running around throwing fire eels here and Molotovs there. This did presume that Kevin would need to find him and did not, at all, take into account the set of circumstances which would result after a certain someone managed to track down the unhinged fourth year hell bent on offense. </p><p>Hak slowly walked toward him, hells clicking against the marble floor of the lobby and echoing in the tall dome of the foyer, the sound rolling over itself again and again in the curved space lofted above their heads. </p><p>“What are you doing this time?” </p><p>Hyunjae flinched and dropped the drone controller he had been holding, sending the small flying machine crashing down from above. </p><p>Hak noticed the tiny pair of industrial blades taped on the side and then glanced at the chandelier again with a sigh. </p><p>“Why?” he asked, so defeated. </p><p>“Because she deserves it,” Hyunjae responded, picking the drone up and shoving into his shoulder bag as he stood. </p><p>“Does she?”</p><p>“Yeah, Hak,” the elder balked. “Kind of think she does.” </p><p>The younger remained silent for a moment. </p><p>“Ah Christ, is this about Juyeon?” Hyunjae eventually asked, the irritation apparent. </p><p>Juyeon and Hyunjae were… unlikely friends. If Hak remembered correctly, it was really only Sangyeon which introduced the two, having formed a small syndicate with the latter, Jacob, and Younghoon in the current senior’s first year. Juyeon had come later, joined by Changmin and Chanhee and well… no one really knew where Kevin came from. But Juyeon and Hyunjae, they were friends. Easily. Indisputably. But were they also comfortably at odds, a consistent and unchanging fact of their relationship. Hak knew the third year grated the other with his constant aloof demeanor, a statue of a man pretending little weakness. Hak also knew the only reason Juyeon was that way acted as a result of the elder’s shy inner disposition. Hyunjae, on the other hand, was outspoken to a fault and brazenly brash with his words. They were friends, yes they were friends. Times like this only displayed what it was that stopped them from really understanding each other.  </p><p>“No,” Hak answered before thinking about it a second longer. “Kind of,” he amended. “I just- he wasn’t completely wrong.” </p><p>“What do you mean?” </p><p>“He’s right, actually. I’m letting my own selfish impulses ruin other people’s lives.”</p><p>“Hak,” Hyunjae said softly moving forward to place his hands on the younger’s shoulder. “You’re not ruining anyone’s life. I’m a whole heck of a lot better off with you in mine, kid. Juyeon’s just being an idiot.” </p><p>The younger’s lip began to tremble, the plush of his bottom lip white where he bit down to control it, but it wavered nonetheless in a tiny vulnerable shake that Hyunjae noticed right away. As the fourth year wound his arms around the other boy, he felt the tension sticking to his back and the pressure bearing on his shoulders like a mighty Atlas bogged down.</p><p>“Hey, dude…” Hyunjae whispered into the other’s hair as Hak pooled down into his arms, the gentlest flinch of muscle in his shoulder blades and the faintest escape of a sob alerting the elder. </p><p>“Hak…” he said again softly and the younger finally broke down, letting the cries tumble from unguarded lips. </p><p>“It’s fine,” the boy snuffled. “I’m fine.” </p><p>Hyunjae tightened his arms around the other’s back. “Look. I’ll stop if you really want me to stop, okay?”</p><p>“Thanks,” Hak mumbled.  </p><p>“Hey,” Hyunjae pulled the other into his arms, resting the boy’s head against his shoulder and cradling the back of his head with an affectionate pet. “Don’t ever thank me. I’m here for it all, bud. Everything.” </p><p>“Even if I don’t get it?” Hak asked and Hyunjae finally knew, yes he had known about its familial implications and had suspicions and inclinings about what this all meant for Hak’s reputation but now, now he knew what it was the boy thought. </p><p>“I met you when you were a snot nosed brat of a first year and decided to pledge my undying loyalty to you in a contract and you think I would break that now that you’re a bonafide prodigy?” </p><p>“I’m not though,” the younger pouted. </p><p>Hyunjae grabbed Hak’s face and lifted it to meet his eyes. “I don’t think there’s anyone I’m more honored to know.” </p><p>Hak’s eyes dried and he released the anxious stiffness in his body in a couple breathes still cocooned in the elder’s space. </p><p>“So this for sure means you don’t want me to drop a giant chandelier on her head?” Hyunjae snickered which had Hak swatting the fourth year’s shoulder with a soft smile.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Dramatics</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Do you have any idea what my life is like now?” Taeyang moaned into the needlepoint pillow he held to his face, elbows curving around the underside to clutch it like a life vest, a deep crimson bordering thread getting lost in the fluff in his sweater where it meant. </p><p>His voice muffled into the fabric tightly pressed against his lips, but somehow his companions, none other than the lanky legs and a tousled hair of a bright eyed first year and the feline vexation of a devastating chic fourth year, managed to pieces the garbled words together. When they said nothing, Taeyang removed the pillow and eyed them over the top of his pillow, a scene of Martorell’s Saint George and the George stitched on the front with golden silk thread, although in its current state upside down. Hwiyoung and Yves appeared throughouly unimpressed, and by appeared it was understood that they were blatantly and explicitly unforgiving to the Quartermaster’s melodramatic antics.</p><p>“It’s so much work,” Taeyang whined at them, sitting up and throwing the pillow to the side with a soft thump, flinging his arm out with the delicate leisure of a royal tantrum. </p><p>Yves raised her eyebrow at the discarded pillow as if to say ‘Really, a tantrum’ before she leaned over the small black device, no larger than a shoe box, in her lap. “You only have to do it for the next like two months,” she reminded him. </p><p>“That’s so long.” </p><p>“Suck it up, buttercup.”</p><p>Taeyang whined again at her words and looked to Hwiyoung for support. The younger boy was too engrossed in staring at the window behind Taeyang’s head to offer a condolence to the irreparably unfair treatment his elder was receiving. What on earth went through the boy’s head as he listlessly drifted through the days, attached to nothing but the horizon line and distant clouds, was a mystery to Taeyang and any other’s catching the outlying contemplation. </p><p>“You know, I bet Kai never had this much trouble,” Taeyang threw back at Yves. </p><p>“Kai never had problems because everyone was in love with him,” she reminded him, which was, of course, more an infamously objective fact than an opinion. </p><p>“What about me?” the current quartermaster reeled back baffled. “I’m a cool too,” he defended. </p><p>The girl flipped a long curtain of shiny black hair over her shoulder with a huff and nudged Hwiyoung’s thigh with her extended foot across the side table sat between their chairs. Hwiyoung swiveled back to them confused. </p><p>“Taeyang says he cool,” she deadpanned.  </p><p>Hwiyoung wrinkled his brow, his nose scrunching slightly in as he exhaled an amused snort. “What? No, he’s not.”  </p><p>“Guys,” Taeyang balked, affronted. “I’m floundering here!” </p><p>“No,” Yves replied. “You’re not. You just don’t like responsibility.” </p><p>The boy mumbled angrily back at her but didn’t respond which Hwiyoung barking out a light and airy laugh. </p><p>“You want to know what I think you should do?” Yves asked the QM. </p><p>“You were there for the whole archives thing,” Taeyang argued. “You’re not impartial so no; I do not care what you think.”  </p><p>Hwiyoung adopted a painfully shocked expression at the fourth year’s words. No one ever spoke to Yves with anything but reverent respect considering she headed the Assassination Nation, the Factory highest grossing club activity. Taeyang had long given up any hope for the presidency upon meeting Yves his sophomore year and gladly feel into the vice position (along with his school wide title of Quartermaster of course). </p><p>“You think just because I got blown up I’m not impartial?” she scoffed. “I’m not a baby.” </p><p>“God I’m just so over this,” Taeyang groaned. “All people do is hunt me down to complain. It’s like ‘just go drown yourself in a bathtub or something.’”</p><p>“Hey,” Yves cut in. “If you drown me you better fucking do it with Clicquot.”</p><p>“That’s not what I meant,” he whined, throwing his head back onto the chair’s arm. </p><p>“Why can’t you sit in a chair normally?” Hwiyoung asked him. </p><p>“He’s a drama queen,” Yves teased turning to the first year. “He’d rather be on a throne.” </p><p>Taeyang picked his head up just to glare at the girl before letting it limply tumble back down again. </p><p>“If I had known…” Taeyang started, speaking the words up at the cooper titled ceiling. “If I had known how much trouble they would cause, I would not have opted to not do this.” </p><p>“Do what? Your job?” Hwiyoung questioned back and for the first time today he sounded genuinely earnest. “What do you mean ‘not do this’?” </p><p>“I mean…” Taeyang drawled. “The whole ‘I can’t make up my mind and make them do it for me’ thing.” </p><p>“That’s not what happens every QM year?” the first year seemed confused. </p><p>“No,” Yves answered for the other. “It isn’t,” she chided crossing her arms. </p><p>“Look, just because I was lazy does not mean I should be punished for it!”</p><p>“Yes, it absolutely does!” Yves sternly replied. </p><p>“I’m fucking responsible! None of my friends are exploding buildings!”</p><p>“Jungeun didn’t destroy the archives! All she did was litter in the fucking forest!”</p><p>Hwiyoung was caught between the two clandestine fourth years, pinnacles of the department in their own rights, household Genius names for all who knew anything about anything at the school. It was funny, the aspiring engineer thought, the position he found himself in the short while after he arrived at the Factory, with two legends stumbling upon him clutching a protruding elbow bone in his hands behind the dining hall. The calm, controlled remoteness of their personas, and Hwiyoung would most adamantly call them personas, a complete contrast their sibling like bickering behind closed doors. </p><p>“So what happened your year?” he asked Taeyang. “How’d you get it?”</p><p>Before Taeyang could answer - and now that Hwiyoung was turning toward the now open door and seeing Yves’ annoyed visage and slightly ajar mouth which clearly indicated she had something to add on the matter – Rocky came stomping into the Clandestine lounge. </p><p>“I AM EXHAUSTED!” he heaved out, glaring directly at a baffled Taeyang. </p><p>“I’m sorry, who are you?” the elder bewilderedly questioned. </p><p>“I’m friend with Jungeun and Haknyeon,” was all the second year said.  </p><p>“Ugh, no,” Taeyang waved him off with a disgusted voice. “Don’t you dare tell me to do something about them.” </p><p>“Please!” Rocky pleaded back. “I’m exhausted!” </p><p>“You think I’m not, kid!” </p><p>“But-” Rocky started. </p><p>“Nope! Not dealing with it! Leave me alone!” Taeyang threw back, vaulting himself out of the wingback and shouldered past the poor gaping second year. </p><p>Yves just turned to Hwiyoung who shrugged back in response and returned to his previous engagement of daydreaming serenity. </p><p>“Taeyang,” Rocky blurted, following the other out the door. </p><p>The elder stopped in his tracks and threw an expectant peek over his shoulder, waiting. The sharp curve of his jaw just barely brushing his shoulder where his chin rested. </p><p>Rocky sighed. “Quartermaster,” he corrected. </p><p>Taeyang nodded and was continuing on his way before the other could finish his thought. The lengthened step of his navy shrouded legs stretching over the ground in a graceful leap of limbs <br/>as he projectiled away from the incessant second year. </p><p>“Please,” Rocky jogged forward through the building, placing himself firmly into the shadow of Taeyang’s steps, the other stubbornly ignored him. “Please.”</p><p>“Look,” Taeyang spun around. “Why am I supposed to be their fucking babysitter?! They’re sophomores for Christ’s sake!”</p><p>They had made it outside by now, Taeyang raising his voice above the ever increasing wind as of late, the torment of air flipping his blazer flaps wildly around his midsection, incessantly patting his sides. A couple milling students, guys with arms shut tight around their jackets and girls wrestling their hair down, paused at the other’s tell tale voice. </p><p>“It’s not my fucking problem until someone dies okay! Then it’s a fucking party.” </p><p>Rocky swayed back and forth between his legs. There was a defeated tautness in his face which almost made Taeyang want to stop and address it, almost. </p><p>"I’m just worried,” he finally replied. </p><p>“You’re not the first person to tell me that and I sure as hell can you that you won’t be last,” the elder replied.  </p><p>“Then why wont you do anything?!” Rocky almost yelled, irritated. </p><p>"I’m not going to do a goddamn thing about it because it’s not my problem.” </p><p>“How?” Rocky stepped toward him, the wind itself pushing slightly at his back in a hand of courage. “How is this not your problem.”</p><p>Taeyang chewed his lip as he walked into the younger’s space, a lusciously terrifying gaze striking the other in the gut like a needle. He leaned into Rocky’s ear. </p><p>“If one of them loses, then I don’t have to make up my mind, now do I?” </p><p>“But what if they get hurt?” Rocky asked. </p><p>And he laughed. Taeyang’s answer was to ripple the air around them with a jovial carefree melody, dancing on his lips and into the tumultuous wind. “They’re too important to die,” he chuckled. “Only nobodies get buried.”</p><p>“Are you-” Rocky began to process the other’s words but all he was left with was Taeyang’s retreating back. </p><p>For such a small island, it was remarkably easy to find anonymity in the gentle persuasions of narrow eases and the hidden rooms and bunkers scattered, practically every dozen feet, between the academic halls. If someone didn’t want to be found, truly, then they would most likely not be seen for at least a week. </p><p>Sunwoo turned to Chanhee, the two of them seated in one of the stone arches along the walkway, and pointed out across the main quad to a thundering body rocketing through the stream of students. “Oh hey, it’s Taeyang!” </p><p>“Do you really think he’s just busy,” Chanhee desperately mumbled into his blank, lifeless phone nestled into his palms. </p><p>“Taeyang?” Sunwoo confused muttered before noticing the other’s hands. “Yes, I promise,” he answered Chanhee for what seemed like the 10th time in the last 20 twenty.  </p><p>“I just… why hasn’t he texted me back all day?”</p><p>“All day?” Sunwoo caught on finally. “Do you mean it’s only been a day?” </p><p>“Well, since 8 am but yeah.”</p><p>“Oh my god,” the first year breathed. </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You’re fine,” Sunwoo told the elder sternly. </p><p>Chanhee merely pouted and dropped his phone into his lap with a huff. He folded his hands up to his cheeks in an anxious vice. The small cross tattoo on the outside of his left pinky wrinkling with the pressure. </p><p>“Dude,” Sunwoo got his attention again, drawing the other’s innocently pleading up to his. “You’re fine,” he repeated. </p><p>Chanhee just groaned and threw his hands down into his lap, smacking his index knuckle on his phone and yelping in response. </p><p>“It’s not a good day.” </p><p>“It’s like ten am.”</p><p>“Horrible day,” Chanhee enunciated back, peeved expression softening after he said it. “But don’t you think he should have finished his project by now?” 	</p><p>“He’s been… a little distracted. We all have. Cut him some slack.” </p><p>“It’s just that I feel like I haven’t seen him since the infirmary. He literally only stops working when he’s incapacitated or I make him,” Chanhee paused. “Or if I make him incapacitated,” he relented. </p><p>“Is this what I have to look forward to?” Sunwoo droned teasingly, swinging his legs back and forth with a toothy grin plastered on his face. </p><p>“Hey!” Chanhee reprimanded him, smacking the back on the younger’s head. </p><p>“And I thought Kevin was dramatic,” the first year laughed. </p><p>“It’s our curse,” Chanhee nodded, seeming to agree. “98 line has a flair for emotional volatility.” </p><p>Sunwoo hummed softly in response. “Hey, Chanhee,” he said after a second. “Can I ask you a question?” </p><p>“Is it about a girl?” the elder asked with a shit-eating smirk.</p><p>“No!” Sunwoo sputtered. </p><p>‘Really?’ Chanhee’s upturned brow seemed to suggest. </p><p>“Oh my god, never mind!”</p><p>“No, okay, I’m sorry,” Chanhee chuckled. “What is it?”</p><p>Sunwoo chewed his lip, tumbling his question around his tongue before he gave in and asked. “Is it like a prerequisite to be hot to join the cyber department?” </p><p>“IS THAT SERIOUSLY WHY YOU WANTED TO HANG OUT?!” the elder barked out in amusement. “THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WORRYING ABOUT?!” </p><p>“Shh!” Sunwoo immediately leaned over and clapped a hand over the other’s mouth with a deadly glare. “Don’t scream about it!” </p><p>Chanhee doubled over, shoving the younger’s hand away.  “I cannot believe you just asked me that,” the boy managed to get in between wheezes of laughter.</p><p>“Shut up,” Sunwoo grumbled into his chest. </p><p>“Did someone tell you that or did you just come up with on your own?” Chanhee laughed. “Cause like, I don’t know which one is funnier! Oh wait, it was totally Younghoon. Was it Younghoon?”  </p><p>“No, just stop. Okay?” Sunwoo protested, glancing around at some of the students which had noticed his older friend’s very public breakdown of decorum. </p><p>“Younghoon really said that, didn’t he?! What a fucking narcissist!” </p><p>“He didn’t!” Sunwoo yelled back suddenly, stopping the other in his trackers. “It was Hwall,” he grumbled. </p><p>Thirty second later and Sunwoo was leaving Chanhee to giggle out his lungs in the middle of the courtyard.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Revenge Is My Only Mistress</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>welcome to me projecting my own nightmare of loosing my laptop and all the academic papers and dissertation research I have on it</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There’s a line; There’s always a line and neither of the two clandestine students had crossed it yet…but, as they kept jockeying, it was inevitable it would be crossed, inevitable someone’s foot would fall into the banned space and then nothing, because of that one step, could be taken back after it dropped. There were whisperings and rumours floating through the air like anthrax in early October in West Palm Beach. The words tumbled from lips to lips, ear to ear, in a great sweltering disease of gossip. But who could blame them, it had been a while since anything interesting, well interesting by Genius standards, had happened. Maybe that was why Yein paused on her way down the hall, why she halted mid step and tuned out Yeonwoo mid-rant as he rambled about the efficiency and logistics of cauterizing wounds with chlorine trifluoride versus straight up silver nitrate– which, to be quite frank, Yein thought was a bust argument to be having in the first place. </p><p>There was a group of kids, packed tightly in, around a poster on the wall. It was a faded old papyrus like stock stuck to the wall with thick duct tape in an oddly confusing juxtaposition of materials. The wood behind it, a deep dark brown, offset the horridly frayed edges of the poster where it hung. Yein shouldered her way in towards it, the font too small for her to read from across the hall. She ignored Yeonwoo’s hand lightly brushing her shoulder and pushed into the throng of murmuring classmates. </p><p>“Yein…” the voice fell to the floor at her back. </p><p>It was bad. It was really bad. A picture of Haknyeon sat before her, his brightly smiling face stretching wide across the paper. His name was written beneath, year and department and everything listed right beside it. But under, oh dear god under that, Jungeun had written – and Yein was sure, deep into the recesses of her soul sure, that Jungeun had done this – the most horribly personal attacks Yein could never even dream up in her nightmares. And there were things, thing she only vaguely knew from said in passing between heated kisses and in darkened corridors amidst rustling fabric, words barely seeking purchase amongst the trysts and the bodies. </p><p>“Oh no,” she breathed out quietly in between the rumbling mass of students, drowned out by the buzzing exchanges. </p><p>In the back of her mind, she knew exactly where he would be and surprised herself with the automatic pounding of her feet as she ran there. </p><p>He was lain into the floor, body crumpled and melting into the thick wool which traversed the floorboards, hands absently picking at small tufts of the carpet with that softly abrasive scraping sound woolen things make when touched. Much the same noise from his childhood, one he knew from when he played beneath his father’s desk, shuffling about in the small hidden space of a grand big room, caves of tiny control in a teetering privileged world. Hak remembers muffled voices over phone speakers and shuffling papers and the distinct smell of his father’s fresh cologne, an old classic dolce blend with a name he’d quite forgotten. Light from the window came in at a harsh angle from the waning sun, a deeply tinged copper ale of wash pouring over the space. He relished in the gentle warmth it brought against the cold ground but he couldn’t bring himself to stand from the chilling hardness underneath. </p><p>The inside curve of his lower leg was pinned right down by the knee of his other, thighs resting stacked upon each other like a tower of limbs. It was so slow in that moment, not calm nor quite quiet, but disgustingly, laboriously slow. The clock hands paused for breaths between the seconds, letting the ticking and tocking fade in and out, to and fro, stumbling through the minutes like a hysterically drunken someone seeking lampposts in the night. The carpet sat scratching against his cheek in a gentle torment of texture that grounded him there. Maybe the world might give up for a little while, halt its pestering pocking and cease the barrage as it hammered his ribcage, and let him have a moment. All he wanted was one moment until it picked back up again, drawling prying eyes down upon his shoulders like a watch dog. And it was fine, he didn’t mind, he just wanted one moment.</p><p>There were a lot of thing, a lot of words, which had been said over the past week, the past month, the past year even. It’s hard to tell when things escalate. It seems so logical, so valid, so sensical when the progress is met with direct impetus and steps clearly placed on in front of the other. Hak sighed and swiveled to lay on his back. As his shoulder blades made impact with the carpet he relaxed into the floor more, down in a submissive apathy. Last year, he had walked into Art of Misdirection, smiled at a face he had known since his birth, and sat by her side with a familiar ease which begged wonderings if friendships lasted over lifetimes. And this year, well, he didn’t know what she was anymore, who she was. </p><p>A soft creak wafted over from the door, a new, harsher white light erupted from the opening and shone like a spotlight at Haknyeon upon the carpet. He removed an arm from his side and placed the crook of his elbow over his eyes in a shield. </p><p>“Sorry,” a whispered followed the now stilled door. </p><p>Hak let his arm fall limply back down to the carpet and leisurely opened an eye at the voice’s interruption.  “What are you doing here?” he spoke to the body hesitating at the door. </p><p>Yein smiled softly down at him. “Looking for you,” she replied. </p><p>The boy closed his eye again and remained in place. </p><p>“Are you-” she started to ask before he sternly interrupted her. </p><p>“I’m not in the mood.” </p><p>“That’s not what I was going to ask,” she quickly answered.  </p><p>“Well,” Hak sighed, sitting up bent at the waist, his legs strewn flat across the ground. “What were you going to ask?” he asked, facing her over his shoulder. </p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>“Maybe.” </p><p>“Hak,” she warned in a tone he knew too well.</p><p>“You know,” he mused. “It’s not a dream for me, Yein. It’s not overconfident ambition. It’s redemption and acceptance and – Jungeun somehow never got that even after all we’ve been through. She still can’t understand that it was never just something I wanted; it’s because I’m scared of expectation.”</p><p>“I’m sorry.”</p><p>He eyed her and there a little less of thing they held before and a little more spark in them. “You seem to be doing an awful lot of apologizing,” he told her. </p><p>“Yeah?” she smiled. “Maybe I am.” </p><p>“You don’t have to.”</p><p>She stepped forward then and knelt beside him on the carpet, knees brushing against the side of his thigh, the heels of her loafers bent behind underneath her, no doubt dirtying her slacks. </p><p>“You don’t have to,” he repeated. “But I like to hear it.”</p><p>Yein moved to sit down, swinging her legs out and plopping down on his side. She leaned into his shoulder, placing her head upon it slowly. </p><p>“You don’t hear it a lot, do you?” she all but whispered. </p><p>“Not from the people I want to.” </p><p>“What about me?” Yein asked. </p><p>His hand came up from between them to wrap across the front of her body and cradle her bent head, his thumb brushing her ear and his palm cupping her cheek. </p><p>“Thank you,” was all he said in response but she understood. </p><p>“She doesn’t really mean it, I think,” Yein said a time later, breaking their companionate silence. “It’s all more like a mistake which snowballed out of control.”  </p><p>“No one ever means their mistakes,” Hak said, still soothing small circles into her hair before abruptly stopping, hand falling back to the floor. “You shouldn’t be here,” he added.  </p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“Because I’m already causing so many problems. I don’t want to be the reason she won’t talk to you.” </p><p> Yein hummed, the small vibration reverberating through Hak’s body from where they touched. “I think she’s more mad at you than she is at me,” Yein thought aloud. </p><p>“Yeah maybe.”</p><p>“Does she have a right to be?” </p><p>Haknyeon leaned down to look at the girl’s face, eyes trailing up the curve of her nose and finally resting on her eyes, closed, eyelashes kissing the tops of her cheekbones. “I don’t know.” </p><p>“That’s okay,” she smiled. “I just wanted to know-”</p><p>“If I was okay?” Hak finished for her. </p><p>Yein nodded softly before asking something which had him reeling back at the sincerity of it. “Do you need me?” she asked and it was perhaps the first time he had ever been asked. </p><p>“Yes.” </p><p>“Then I’ll stay,” she said, snuggling into his side. </p><p>“Yeah,” he breathed out into the quiet room. “Yeah you can stay.” </p><p>So she did. It was quiet there; only shallow gentle breathes to disturb the blanket of still air which had settled around them. The light grew weak, drifting from above their heads to drip down their bodies as the time passed, pooling to rest on the oak beside their tangle legs. It was warm and tender, an achingly delicate wash of golden light which seemed to kiss their bodies in a million gentle pecks. The carpet rubbed against Hak’s palm where it rested on it, the back of his neck bristling slightly at the itch of the wool where he lay. Yein’s head dug a bit into his shoulder where its weight sat on his chest, but he didn’t mind. She curled into his side on the ground like a vice, the squeeze of her arm around his waist a reminder he wasn’t alone and didn’t want to be. </p><p>“So you saw it?” he asked her sometime later, feeling her body tense as soon as the words were out.</p><p>“Hak…” she let out slowly, not exactly knowing what to say. “I’m so sorry.” </p><p>“Not like everyone wasn’t thinking it anyways,” he mumbled mechanically, like it was a programmed habit of response, and that the most was what broke her heart. </p><p>“They don’t,” she said. “They shouldn’t.” </p><p>Another beat passed between them. </p><p>“What are you going to do?” Yein asked him. </p><p>“Nothing.” </p><p>She extracted herself from his shoulder, hand pushing lightly at his thigh as she sat up. “You aren’t?” she bristled. </p><p>“Sometimes it’s not worth it,” he answered.  </p><p>Yein saw a desperate strength in his eyes, the marks of a hardened conviction in his features. It was a strength learned from a life of fighting. He had callouses around his heart, she thought, formed from battering and beating and brutalizing. </p><p>“You are worth it.” </p><p>Hak tuned to her confused. “I didn’t say…” </p><p>Her eyes shone with a warm understanding, the edges shining with a kind sympathy for the words she knew he wouldn’t say but which always rested right there, silently in the air between them. </p><p>“I know,” she said, reaching a hand over to caress is cheek, body crouched over his laying figure like she wished to protect him against the world. </p><p>A part of him thought she might be able too. Hak closed his eyes and leaned into her palm, his eyelashes brushing closed against the top of her thumb.  </p><p>“I’ll be here,” Yein said, the melody of her voice tumbling into his ear on a river of milk and honey. “Until you don’t want me to be.” </p><p>“I don’t ever want you to leave,” he admitted. </p><p>And so she didn’t. </p><p>---</p><p>On the other side of campus, tucked into the back stone stairwell no one ever used, a steep curve set in the spiral tower on the side of the oldest dorm Marat-Corday, Changmin wrestled his arm away from a tiny sullied window to face his friends in surprise. Kevin and Sunwoo stared back at him in alarm. The window shook in the wind, banging into the frame every second in a rhythmic racket. </p><p>“Did you just?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Changmin answered Kevin, swallowing the lump in his throat terrified. “Yeah I did.” </p><p>“Maybe it didn’t break…” Sunwoo mumbled, eyes glued to the window.</p><p>All three of the boys clamored over each other in the small space to stick their faces to the clanging glass pane, gazing down the side of the building, five stories of brick and stone and stained glass panels. At the bottom, nestled in grass which was impossibly too green for the climate and the soil, sat Jungeun’s stolen laptop, the girl’s files and work and life and all. It was a hunk of metal and wire, unrecognizable and smoldering, a plume of smoke erupting from a heftily missing chunk in the... side? It was more a jumble of black smoking mass than anything else. </p><p>“What do we do?!” Sunwoo faltered, visibly shaken, as he turned to the two third years beside him. </p><p>“I don’t know!!!” Changmin sputtered back. </p><p>Kevin was stunned silent, sat down on the cold step, eyes trained on the wall lifelessly. “We’re in so much trouble,” he inaudibly muttered. </p><p>“What do you mean you don’t know?!” the first year brandished at Changmin, unsettled. “You’re adults!”</p><p>“You think we’re adults?!” the elder balked. </p><p>“You’re 21!”</p><p>“I’m not responsible! I just accidentally dropped a laptop out of a window!” </p><p>“I still make Jacob book all my flights for me,” Kevin mumbled at the other boys. “I’m a baby.”	 </p><p>“OH MY GOD WHAT DO WE TELL HAK?” Sunwoo yelled at them, grabbing his hair in frustration. </p><p>Kevin’s eyes widened. “We have to tell him?!” </p><p>“OF COURSE WE DO!” Sunwoo shouted at the same time as Changmin sternly responded “NO!” </p><p>“They’re both going to kill us,” Kevin deflated. “Don’t you remember what Hyunjae said.” </p><p>“I don’t think Jacob can save us anymore.” </p><p>Sunwoo and Kevin looked at Changmin alarmed. </p><p>“But he always saves us,” Kevin whined. </p><p>“Not this time. This time we die.”  </p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. An Inexcusable, Unforgivable, Reprehensible Act</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I might have a thing for violent arguments... might</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jungeun knew she reached the point of no return when she turned to find herself gasping for breath, lifted from the table she was sitting on, with a meaty hand wrapped around her windpipe. She reached up to grab Haknyeon’s wrist with bot her hand, elbows bracketing her face as she struggled against his hold, grunting and kicking into his shins with her Mary Jane clad feet, little frilly bob socks swinging in the air. </p><p>“YOU FUCKER!” he seethed in her face, fist tight in the girl’s hair as he held her head aloft before his, so close the flying spit from his grit teeth flew onto her cheek. “YOU ABSOLUTE ASSHOLE!” he screamed. </p><p>“Let me go!” she grunted, aggressively flailing about in a flurry of limbs. </p><p>“WHY DID YOU DO IT?!” he continued to scream in her face, the girl’s eyes screwing shut against the barrage of vicious words. “HOW COULD YOU?!” </p><p>“LET GO OF ME RIGHT NOW!” she bit back louder, opening her eyes to glare at him. </p><p>“YOU FUCKING RUINED HIM!” </p><p>Jungeun scratched his wrist up with her pointed lacquer nails, the navy colour chipping against his skin and flaking away. “I don’t know what you want from me,” she managed to cough out as they wrestled their limbs. “But I’m not the giving type so I can guarantee you’ll be disappointed.” </p><p>Hak released her with a charged huff, flinging her body down to the table with a smack. The girl fell the short distance with a gasp, clawing at her throat and sputtering upon the table’s surface, her hip having rammed into the corner and her body now splattered flat upon it. </p><p>“I thought you would know when to stop,” he added quieter. “When it wasn’t okay anymore.” He sighed. “But I was wrong.” </p><p>“It’s not like any of my friends were off limits,” she growled at him, pushing to sit up and meet his eyes.  </p><p>“Yeah, your fucking friends, who, for the record, injured Sunwoo so badly that he couldn’t eat for a week. But it’s my brother!” he yelled again, advancing forward with an arm raised which he used to plaster her shoulders to the wooden surface, his forearm cracking against her collar bone. “My brother!” </p><p>Jungeun pushed against him before going limp and winding her hands around his wrist and elbow to dig her nails in. The boy released her with a yelp and she sat up, kicking him away. </p><p>"He can handle it, Hak,” she grit out, Haknyeon now standing between her thighs where they rested folded over the edge of the table. </p><p>“No, he really can’t!” Hak chided her. “He never could. And so he left and you know he left and you know he was trying to do good and that he was happy.”</p><p>“We don’t get to be happy,” Jungeun laughed bitterly in his face. “None of us are allowed to be happy! I did him a favor. He’s a goddamn coward for running away.” </p><p>“NO, HE’S NOT!” Hak screamed so loudly she stopped. “He was so fucking miserable, Jung. You remember; I know you do.”</p><p>She remained silent as he spoke, a slight fidgeting tremor in her fingers as they twitched atop her leg. </p><p>“And when they sent him away… when my grandfather sent him away,” Hak corrected. “He decided to do something different and he a built of life to be proud of.”</p><p>Jungeun recoiled her body at his statement. “All he did was bury all the awful things he did and pretend to be Mr. Law-Abiding Citizen,” she argued.   </p><p>“It doesn’t give you a right to unearth his skeletons to the world and tear apart a grown man’s life with your bare hands because you’re too fucking stubborn and selfish to admit to yourself that the only bloody reason you wanted anything to do with this is was to spite me.” </p><p>“That’s not true.” </p><p>“Really? Fucking prove it,” he taunted her, moving forward to shove her shoulders back again and again until she hit the wall with a slam. </p><p>The paintings on the wall shook violently as Jungeun’s body made contact. Her ear tickled at the distant sound of a thundering wind outside, just inches away rattling the window hatch like the beginnings of an earthquake. One of the pictures, she vaguely recalled being an El Greco, crashed to the floor by her side, shattering the tempered glass cover and denting the old wooden frame. Hak didn’t even blink at the noise. </p><p>“Prove to me you didn’t do this because you started hating me so much that I forgot how to feel,” he growled.  </p><p>“It’s not my fault you’re weak,” she threw out, shoving him in return and smirking as he stumbled. </p><p>“No one ever believed in me more than you did, and then you-” he paused and met her eyes, not letting her hide as he stripped her soul. “You just turned into a monster one day and I don’t know why.” </p><p>“I wanted to be better,” she replied. </p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I wanted to be the best. I wanted to win. I wanted-” she ranted. </p><p>“What the fuck did you want so much you had to ruin my brother’s life?” </p><p>And that was it. That was the question she had even asked herself as she did it. As she waited before a dozen folders of incriminating information on a man who had somehow found a point when none of the rest of them ever could. When she tore down a good man. It was so quiet in that sliver between his words and when she finally responded that the faint background of people talking outside the room, laughing and speaking with jovially innocent tones, filtered through remaindering her that there was a world outside them, the two of them, which had kept on marching on without them. </p><p>“… I don’t know,” she confessed. </p><p>It was so strange in the moments Hak had entered the burning speed of frenetic passion which had quelled into a cold slowness as they stopped screamed and started admitted things. </p><p>“I’m not okay,” Hak said after a beat, the second ticking by at the same speed as a lost snowflake drifting haphazardly down from the sky.  </p><p>“Hak, I-”</p><p>“But how would you know?” He bit out, interrupting her, as if the words were so acrid he viscerally needed to spit them from his mouth. “You’ve got a world or two to live for, on a golden fucking platter too.”</p><p>“It’s not like you’re any different.” </p><p>“YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!” he frantically shouted, the frustration bearing itself upon his body like a cloak. “You never UNDERSTOOD what the fuck it was like to be me, did you?” </p><p>The patronization of his tone practically soaked the words through like a sponge heavy with industrial bleach. “I’ve lived my life chasing the key to a ransacked closet and everyone but me knew it was empty,” he paused. “You even knew,” he laughed bitterly. “Cause you just know everything don’t you?” </p><p>“That’s not-”</p><p>“EXCEPT YOU DON’T!” He screamed. “And it wasn’t about me! Because I don’t really give a fuck if you decided to make my life a living hell, but his?”</p><p>“Where’s the fucking limit in a war, Hak? Who gets to decided?” she growled back but it less a question and more just the seething sentence of vindictive foe. “Who gets to draw the fucking line and blame the other for crossing it?” </p><p>“It wasn’t fair!” the boy bit back, knowing full well he was being accused of a slippery moral high ground she thought didn’t belong to him. </p><p>Jungeun bit her lip and balled her fists, pounding them into the air as she sputtered out vicious whips of her tongue. “WHY ARE YOU ALLOWED TO BLAME IT ALL ON ME?!” she nearly screamed her throat raw. </p><p>“WHY ARE YOU ALLOWED TO RUIN THE ONLY GOOD THING I’VE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE?!”</p><p>Is it enough to notice the face you're yelling at in anger, unloading hostiles perhaps not meant for them to bear, is contorted in a desperate sting of betrayal? That your words are hammering into the visible cracks on their surface and wedging their way into their heart? that what you call them, what you believe them to be, has become so bastardized beyond belief that they no longer recognize themselves even? </p><p>And do they deserve it? Perhaps not all of it, but no one is innocent, without blame, without the marring scar culpability. The sad thing was they all bore it now, the marks of war. they were all guilty in their own ways. Maybe it was not supposed to be their problem, in the beginning, but it sure as hell was now and there was no going back: no reprieve from battle granted on the graceful whims of a king and a general. There was only anger and it was not ready to flee. It had shrunk down to the earth, gripping talons into the mud in a steadying clutch against all who were tempted to sway it. it did not move. It was here, and it was here to stay. No, there was no going back now… and if doubt should arise, on either side, of the one they followed, they best swallow it like a bitter tonic and hiding disgusted faces lest an unbeliever be revealed. </p><p>“It’s not just my fault!” she desperately defended; a strangled sadness stitched into her tone. “How can all of this just be my fault?”</p><p>“But nothing’s ever your fault, don’t you get it?” he yelled and then his face fell, muscles dropping in an emotional exhaustion. “Do you understand,” he whispered out. “What I have to fucking deal with because of you.” </p><p>“They’re overreacting.”</p><p>His eyes flew to hers and the cold amazement they held in them had her shivering. “And who’s going to tell them that? You?” </p><p>“Why don’t you?!”</p><p>“Imagine! Just fucking imagine never being enough no matter what you do, no matter what parts of yourself you carve away because you were asked to be perfect. Imagine betraying the privilege you were born into despite trying… trying so fucking hard not to. Just failing and failing and failing,” he repeated the last word in a sinful mantra. </p><p>“You don’t have anything to say to that do you?” He yelled back when she just stood there rigid. </p><p>And then Jungeun said the only thing she ever regretted uttering in her 20 years on this year. “You’ll never be good enough for them.” </p><p>A bullet was a bullet. It broke skin, and lodged into bone, into sinew, and into pumping organs lest it break right through them and out the other end. They ripped through bodies and imbedded into blood soaked entrails in an invasive little surprise. But sometimes, as one must well know, it hit just right, just the perfect spot, to stop a heart or a head or a life. Aimed, just so incredibly perfectly, that it did more damage than all the other times. The wavering breath which escaped Haknyeon’s chest in choppy little huffs against a heavy pressure, the glassy welling of his eyes which shone ever so slightly in the light, the slackening muscles of his face which dropped in the most despondent victimization ever: she knew she had aimed a little perfectly. </p><p>“I know,” he whispered and she could practically see the blood. </p><p>“I want to win,” she said again, somehow a sense of guilt tacked into the words like a shameful confession made in a dark room for no one to hear. </p><p>“I know,” Hak repeated. “I wish you all the best in doing your worst,” he added, throwing the words blindly into the silence between them, not staying to watch if they would land upon anything.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Intervention</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>this one is short but oh well</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hyunjin turned over onto her side, a stitch of pain rocketing through her spine at the twist in a stinging fire which blazed up her vertebra to stop at her neck. It caught her breathe in her chest and had the girl blinking away dark spots swimming in her vision. Her bare legs brushed against a soft blanket tucked around her midsection just under her armpits which felt the gentle breeze of a fan in the loose fabric she was wearing. The muted sound of clicking metal announced itself behind her, back facing toward the noise. She opened her eyes and immediately her vision was filled with white: sheets, curtains, tiled floor. Hyunjin lazily processed the room before her eyes fell onto the figure in the adjacent bed. </p><p>The boy laid asleep, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, arms splayed out on either side and legs jumbled with the blanket in a heap. She stared at him, waiting, letting her mind begin to wash memories over her. Another pang erupted from her oblique, filling the area around it with a flood of heat and discomfort. She lifted her arm, fighting more against gravity than she normally would, and pushed the stark sheet back to reveal a hospital gown covering her body. Gingerly she peeled back the gown, and revealed a bright red soaked bandage roughly the size of C.D. strapped to her stomach, a distinct stench of pungent disinfectant clinging to it. She sighed and dropped her arm back to the mattress, registering the feeling of the plastic tube in her arm as it jostled at the movement, tugging at the tape across it. How much blood had they lost? The infirmary didn’t take every case which arose, granted it was wealthy and well-staffed and modernly equipped but generally, well generally they specialized in antidotes and burn ointment. The Med school’s black market for prosthetics and otherwise was… tacitly accepted by the Factory’s administration. Blind eyes, Hyunjin thought to herself, they dealt in blind eyes. </p><p>“Hwall,” she whisper yelled across the tile towards the unconscious boy. “Hwall.” </p><p>He groaned and stirred, head shifting against the pillow with a faint rustling and lips murmuring nothings into the air. </p><p>“Hwall, goddammit,” Hyunjin whispered louder. </p><p>The boy swung his head around toward the noise, eyes still firmly closed and lips still articulating incoherent blatherings. Hyunjin reached behind her and wrench the pillow out from under her head with a labored grunt. It took only a second’s worth of debate before she ultimately decided to heave the pillow across the room with her arm, watching it sail toward the other bed, hit the side with a soft thump, and tumble to the floor. She grumbled in a whimpered protest glaring at it as it sat on the ground, mocking her. Her head fell back to the mattress, now flat sans pillow, and studied the ceiling. How the hell was she going to explain this to Jungeun? </p><p>“Heejin’s gonna be so mad,” she muttered to herself as an afterthought. </p><p>Hyunjin looked back over at the boy, a disgustingly sweaty piece of her hair stuck to her neck. Maybe bringing a knife to a verbal fight wasn’t the best idea, well, more like an argument, and okay, more like she bumped into the other in the hall on her way to A Study in Psychopathy lecture given by the miraculously humor driven Mr. Matthews and Hwall had made some dumb ass comment with the typical fuck boy confidence he was known for and she just happened to have a switchblade strapped to her thigh under her skirt because why not and things had just sort of… happened. Not like she regretted though. To clarify, she absolutely did not regret it. What she regretted was when the boy had defensively punched her in the face after the first slice, tackled her in the middle of student clogged corridor, and wrestled the blade away from her hands. At that memory, she scrunched her nose slightly to test its durability and was left wincing in pain. Of course, it had somehow ended up that the knife stabbed both of them quite deeply in the tousle and here they were, joined in companionate misery. </p><p>Haseul always told her crushes had expiration dates. Perhaps nearly having your gut eviscerated in front of all your classmates was enough to speed up the process. Perhaps. Speak of the devil… </p><p>“Hey buddy, how you holding up?” Haseul asked, walking through the French doors and moving to sit down on the foot of the younger’s bed. </p><p>“Can you please not tell Jungeun,” the injured girl pleaded.  </p><p>“Hyunjin, I can’t just-”</p><p>“Don’t tell her I lost,” Hyunjin quickly finished.  </p><p>Haseul sighed deep in her chest. “Honey, that’s not the point.” </p><p>“Yes. It is,” Hyunjin insisted. “I lost,” she added sadly. </p><p>“You’re in the infirmary.” </p><p>Hyunjin shrugged in the bed, wincing slightly at the movement. “This is war, I guess,” she answered. </p><p>“I’ll come by later,” Haseul said. “After my meeting. Do you need anything?” she asked. </p><p>“No, I’m good,” the younger waved her off. “I’ll be out of here soon enough.” </p><p>Haseul smiled softly at the other, petting her hair with a delicate hand before turning to leave. The scene of her baby first year tucked into an infirmary bed and lamenting her apparent loss on behalf of a dangerously escalated prank war was a lot to take in. The poor girl felt ashamed for it. The fourth year decided enough and was enough and after making two phone calls was dragging a sputtering and whining Jungeun through the threshold of the clandestine lounge, the younger’s shoes catching on the lip of the doorway and causing her to practically fall into the space at the mercy of her older friend. Haseul’s arm gripped blisteringly tight on her bicep as she was thrown onto the green silken sofa of the clandestine lounge next to Haknyeon, Taeyang and Juyeon having already cleared the room out minutes before. </p><p>“Don’t manhandle me!” she grumbled. “I’m not a kid.” </p><p>“The stop acting like one,” Haseul replied.  </p><p>“Guess what you did now,” Taeyang deadpanned at the two second years, Juyeon and Haseul at his back. </p><p>“Beside the fucking smear campaign?” Jungeun sarcastically asked. </p><p>“Besides my brother’s arrest,” Hak shot at her in response. </p><p>“Hwall and Hyunjin were under the impression that a goddamn knife fight in the middle of the school day in broad daylight was a good idea considering the circumstances you two created.” </p><p>Jungeun scoffed. “I didn’t tell her to stab that prick. He probably deserved it anyways.”  </p><p>“Are you kidding me?!” Taeyang exploded. “Do you two have any idea how many goddamn meetings I’ve been dragged to in the last three hours because of that little fiasco.” </p><p>Jungeun opened her mouth to defend herself but the withering look Taeyang gave her had her shutting it again. </p><p>"I want you to tell me,” he said with a pause, switching his gaze from Haknyeon to Jungeun. “What part of ANY OF THIS,” he continued looking back to Hak, “…sounded like a good idea.” </p><p>“We-” Hak started to defend. </p><p>“And before you start,” Taeyang interrupted, holding up his hand. “You better not BULLSHIT ME because I am so unbelievably done with dealing with this right now.” </p><p>“It’s a disagreement,” Jungeun replied, calmly crossing her legs, tapping her foot after she settled. </p><p>No one answered save for Haseul’s hands moving to rub her temples in exasperation. </p><p>“We’re working some stuff out right now,” the other added.  </p><p>Taeyang rolled his eyes. Juyeon looked at Hak and just sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. </p><p>“What are they doing here?” Jungeun pointed at the two fourth years behind the Quartermaster. </p><p>“Haseul and I decided-”</p><p>“You and Haseul?!” Hak questioned. “Decided what?” </p><p>Juyeon’s jaw visibly tightened. “That we would stop you if you got too far,” he grit out through clenched teeth.  </p><p>“Why would you care? You’re not even my friend anymore!” </p><p>“We decided that it’s gotten out of hand,” Haseul stepped in. </p><p>“We’re worried,” Juyeon tacked on. “I’m worried.” </p><p>“Maybe you wouldn’t have to worry if still fucking talked to me, you jerk,” Hak threw back.  </p><p>“Or if you just gave up already,” Jungeun mumbled earning a glare from Haseul who stood firmly next the Juyeon before them. </p><p>“Haknyeon,” the elder warned. “You know I stayed out of it because I don’t want you to get hurt.” </p><p>“Bullshit! You stayed out of it for her!” he spat gesturing to Haseul who flinched away from his stare. “Don’t you dare pretend you care about me!” </p><p>“Of course I care about you, you idiot!” </p><p>Hak laughed. “Gee, really feeling the love now.” </p><p>“You’re unhinged,” Juyeon accused him. </p><p>“Did we come here to get yelled at?” Jungeun added in. “Because if so, I’m just gonna leave.” </p><p>“I don’t think either of you understand what you’ve done,” Taeyang responded. </p><p>They both knew better than to respond and sat silent as Taeyang paced in front of the sofa, dress shoes pressing into the creaking floorboards as he passed by again and again. </p><p>“Fuck,” he said. “I don’t even know if either of you are worth it anymore.”</p><p>Who had he picked? After one of the most infamous quartermasters the factory had ever seen, Taeyang already felt the pressure the titled bore on his head. And now he was faced with a decision between the ambitious little princess of a war profiteer and a forgotten son from the land of the gods. It wouldn’t be so bad, it wouldn’t be half bad, if they didn’t each believe the other an archenemy along the lines of cold war antagonism.  </p><p>“I better not hear anything more about the two of you,” Taeyang added and then he just left. </p><p>Hak and Jungeun remained plastered to the couch, neither moving a muscle or daring to speak. Juyeon cleared his throat. </p><p>“You can go now,” he said and they nodded, filing out of the room wordlessly. </p><p>Haseul and Juyeon remained in the room, the former placing herself down on Hak’s abandoned seat lightly. She looked at the other and patted the cushion beside her. Juyeon acquiesced and plopped down beside her with an exhale, letting his head roll back to the top of the sofa. </p><p>“Do you think they’ll stop?” she asked him. </p><p>“I don’t know, Seul,” Juyeon shook his head. “I don’t know.” </p><p>“What else can we do?”</p><p>Juyeon reached over and placed a comforting hand on her knew. “I hate to sound like a broken record…” he started. </p><p>“This is hard,” she said after a moment. </p><p>“It really shouldn’t be this difficult,” he agreed, his thumb now rubbing small circles into her bone absentmindedly. </p><p>She glanced at the boy to see if he knew and smiled at his thoughtfully focused expression, his hand clearly moving on its own accord. If he were aware, there was no one he would be keeping <br/>a straight face, most likely floundering instead in embarrassment. </p><p>“That’s war I guess,” she murmured, remembering the first year’s words from earlier. </p><p>“Yeah. Yeah I guess it is,” he responded, hand stilling as came to the realization and pulled it back to fold in his own lap. </p><p>“Uh, sorry about that.” </p><p>“It’s okay,” she said with a gentle smile. “I don’t mind.”</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Red Sky in the Morn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Hello, me again. I’m here to spread the Gon (ARGON) agenda because I love him. </p><p>Also, the one conversation is entirely based off that one Twitter exchange about Kcon.<br/>(Because I think about it at least once a day.)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The rooms at Genius were large, queen beds and lavishly mismatched antiques dotting castle like structures with big windows and beautiful floors. There were a couple triples, save the odd quad which was generally reserved for very insistent fourth years who griped about first year noise levels. Changmin and Kevin had lived together since there second year, both having left their respective roommates with a cordial, mutual aloofness on account of… incompatible priorities. It was simple and easy living together. That and the fact that Kevin, too often one might say, stumbled sleepily through the corridors at night to find Jacob’s room, the elder long having realized to keep his door unlocked until the younger was safely inside. </p><p>“Okay, what are we going to do now?” Woong pouted from Changmin’s bed, holding out a near empty bottle of aged glass yellowed with wear and a fraying paper label, black and red letting fading and torn away. </p><p>A fluffy yellow sweater sat across his chest, the tufts of fabric sticking up with static and tickling his neck. Shoes were discarded upon the floor with three other pairs to join them, Changmin’s feet still securely laced into his own black loafers. Gon craned his neck over the sheets of schematics he was holding, stomach rested on the floor and feet swinging in small circles behind him. The other boys laid in various states of drunken exhaustion and hyper frenzy, dotting the dorm room in little spots of pooling fabric, visceral groans, and shuffling pages. </p><p>“There’s still some,” the third year replied, tilting his head to the left. </p><p>“What?” the elder studied the bottle in his hand, with narrowed eyes, shaking it lightly. “No, there isn’t.”</p><p>Gon leaned over Changmin’s flat figure before him, grabbed the bottle right out of Woong’s hand and held it in the air aloft his head, pouring a single drop down the side and into his mouth. </p><p>“Yum,” the boy smirked, smacking his lips. </p><p>“Well now there's not…” </p><p>Jangjun rolled his head with a loud crack which caught both the boys attention, his broad back languidly draped over the front of a large wingback chair stuck in the corner of the room. It was remarkable he even fit into it really. Changmin was still very much nursing his sanity amidst his fourth sloshing glass of rum and coke, practically melted into the floor with eyes firmly shut and BX was… well, he may or may not have been conscious at this point. The third year was, surprisingly, a lightweight.  </p><p>“Now that we are officially run dry,” Jangjun slurred out, head facing the floorboards and knees pointed to the ceiling. “I must admit that I simply will not be able to make it another hour without something to wet my lips.” </p><p>“Is he three sheets already?” Gon asked Jangjun, the two of them being the only ones left with a regular vernacular and open eyes. </p><p><em>“There ain’t nothing like a dame,”</em> Jangjun’s timber voice boomed out in song. <em>“Nothing in the woooorld.” </em></p><p>Woong sighed.	“And now he’s singing South Pacific.” </p><p>
  <em>“We feel restless, we feel blue.” </em>
</p><p>“At least he’s not that bad,” Gon offered the elder. </p><p>“A bit pitchy,” BX muttered out. </p><p>“Oh,” Gon turned to the other, stuffed atop Changmin’s roommate Kevin’s bed. “You’re not dead.” </p><p>BX rolled into the obscenely large pile of pillow lining the wall down the length of the mattress. “God, I wish.” </p><p>
  <em>“Lots of things in life are BEAUTIFUL!!!” </em>
</p><p>Changmin grunted at the shrill voice as he sat up, legs splayed out and back slumped forward between them, hands resting between his knees to steady himself. “I’m getting more booze,” he decided. </p><p>“I’ll help,” Woong jumped up to offer a hand towards his engineering junior, shoving sockless feet into his shoes.  </p><p>“Thanks,” Changmin mumbled, barely making it back up on his two feet. </p><p>
  <em>“We feel hungry as the wolf felt.”</em>
</p><p>BX made eye contact with Gon while Woong guided Changmin out the door. “What the fuck is that play about???” </p><p>Once the two had brought back what appeared to be a case of Genius signature moonshine, things swayed. The three third year and two fourth year engineering students faded into the night hours with a delirious intoxication spattered with boisterous gut rumbling laughs, shaking their whole bodies and stretching their faces impossible wide in devilish grins of  impulse. </p><p>Gon rolled onto his side, holding his stomach as he laughed his lungs straight out of his chest. “And then he asked her-“ he wheezed in the middle catching his breath between giggled. “He asked her if she was hot enough to light a match,” the boy cackled. “And he fucking pulls out the match box, right?! And they don’t work! And she’s just standing there staring at him with the most annoyed expression and he’s fucking yanking out matches left and right, scoring them against the side and it,” he paused again to giggle viciously. “THEY JUST WOULDN’T LIGHT!” </p><p>BX chuckled from his position now tucked under Kevin’s fluffy navy comforter because, as he had argued with Changmin for five minutes before the other had conceded and let him nestle inside, he was cold. The Island was experiencing an early summer cold front that frosted the flowers buds and drew clouds over the season’s first blue skies. </p><p>“I THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD PICK UP LINE!” Jangjun defended. </p><p>“Dude,” Changmin laughed. “They were expired.”</p><p>“Matches expire??” </p><p>“YOU’RE A FOURTH YEAR ENGINEER!” Woong shouted in joyous accusation, a finger pointed across the room at his classmate. </p><p>“HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW?!” </p><p>“Wait,” BX cut in, raising his hand in the air. “What made you think that was a good line to use on someone?”</p><p>Jangjun shrugged back with an excessively offended face, shaking his head mockingly at the younger. </p><p>“Who was it?” Changmin asked. </p><p>Jangjun immediately whipped his head around to the only boy which had been there his first year to witness it, despite Gon having heard and memorized the entire tale. Woong lifted his eyebrow at Jangjun. </p><p>“No, seriously, please,” the latter pleaded. </p><p>Woong turned back to Changmin with a tight lipped smile. “Roa.” 	</p><p>“IT WAS FUCKING ROA?!” Changmin and Gon screamed out in laughter at the same time, facing each other with outlandishly wide eyes. </p><p>“It’s almost as bad as the time he fell off the old reactor,” Woong joked. </p><p>BX’s head popped up from Kevin’s bed, his body ever increasingly melding into the mattress, ready for sleep to take him. “Wasn’t that like 30 feet high?” </p><p>He was met with a giddy “Yes.” And a staunch, embarrassed “No.” simultaneously. </p><p>Jangjun and Woong made eye contact again. </p><p>"28,” Jangjun answered deadly serious. </p><p>“Or the time he-” Woong started to tease again before Jangjun’s hand was latched over his mouth in a fleshy vice. </p><p>Changmin hummed as the two elders struggled together. “I don’t know what the dumbest thing I’ve ever done is,” he thought aloud.  </p><p>“Probably haven’t done it yet,” BX threw over. </p><p>“I know that was supposed to be a joke but you’re probably right.”</p><p>Gon reached over and tapped Changmin’s leg with the end of his pen. “Did you not just dump Jungeun’s laptop out a window like three days ago?” </p><p>“…Maybe.” </p><p>“If we were included that whole thing…” BX began to muse. </p><p>“What whole thing?” Changmin interrupted him, confused. </p><p>“<em>That</em> whole thing,” BX emphasized which seemed to placate. “Then it was probably the Molotovs.” </p><p>“Really?!” Changmin balked. “Not the fucking woods?” </p><p>“Hey,” the boy threw up his hands in defense. “Love me some independent women reenacting history.” </p><p>“I was kidnapped!” </p><p>“Like we all weren’t” BX snorted. </p><p>“There were bugs!” </p><p>“Okay, Okay,” Woong laughed out, finally having extracted himself from his friend’s muscled biceps, an exerted breathiness taking over his tone. </p><p>“So, uh what’s up with the boys?” Gon suddenly asked them.</p><p>Woong exchanged a confused glance with Changmin before deciding to indulge the third year. “Which boys?” he asked. </p><p>“You know,” Gon shrugged. “The boys.”  </p><p>Jangjun looked over now, furrowed brow and lost expression. “Who?”</p><p>“The boys,” Gon repeated in a steady voice as if it really didn’t need any more explanation.  </p><p>“Okay seriously dude, stop.” Changmin cut in. </p><p>“He’s farther gone than I thought,” BX added. </p><p>“I only gave him like…” Jangjun stopped to count out on his fingers and once he reached the end of his second hand, raised his eyes in realization. “Oh.” </p><p>Gon huffed in frustration, dropping his arms down beside him. “I’m literally just asking about the boys.”</p><p>“WHAT BOYS?” Woong yelled back. </p><p>“Hak, Chanhee, Kevin, Hyunjae…” Gon paused to motion vaguely at Changmin. “The boys,” he finished. </p><p>“Literally no one calls them that.” BX said. “What the heck?”</p><p>“Why wasn’t I included?” Changmin pouted. </p><p>“I was asking you!” Gon replied hastily. </p><p>“I thought you asked me?” Woong questioned. </p><p>“I WAS ASKING EVERYONE IN GENERAL!” </p><p>“Why is he even asking?” Jangjun insisted which had BX agreeingly nodding along and eyeing Jangjun expectantly. </p><p>“UGH!” the poor third year collapsed onto the carpet. “Nevermind.” </p><p>Once BX was softly snoring into Kevin’s pillow - the owner having long relinquished his room to Changmin’s propulsions club bi-monthly late-night sessions- and Woong and Jangjun had passed out together on Changmin’s own bed, it was quiet and calm and still. Gon remained in the window seat, listening the snores of his department comrades as he nestled atop the thick stone window seat carved right into the wall. He had a scratchy woolen blanket of the most horrendously awful pattern draped over his legs. </p><p>“Hey,” Gon’s soft voice drifted over the space, breaking the silence like a little needle injecting the faintest words into the air. “Do you think it’s going to storm soon?” he mused staring out onto the choppy sea, eyes locked to the clouds above the island barely visible in the first waxing rays of the morning so early it still struggled to shrug off the night.</p><p>A faint rustle of wind blew through the open window and tousled Changmin’s hair where he lay atop a pile of blankets. The cool wind settled over him and too drifted off to a dead slumber on his skin. </p><p>“Oh,” Changmin whispered back. “I’m just waiting for rain.”</p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Unbridled Terror</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Sorry these last two are kind of short - I might come back to them later</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It didn’t rain at Genius. Not in so much as one understood that word to mean a cleansing shower or a trickling stream. It wasn’t soft nor gentle nor expectantly tumbling. Storms didn’t bring the same wistful sticky nostalgia which rolled in on the backs of tender mists that kissed stranger’s cheeks and caressed mournful sinners into tender confessions. It was different here. Most things were. There was no faint pitter patter of drops against shut window panes nor an ambient rush of sunless tears through cracks in the bulwarks. No, at Genius it poured. Nothing short of a deadly serious maelstrom, the sky viciously dumping pools of liquid bullets against the island, battering it down in a flood. If the Factory was home to impulsively inclined individuals harboring enormously complex yearnings, the weather certainly matched: relentless and strong-willed and unforgiving against any incurred suffering. When the sky shook and flashed and groaned wheezing screams of fury, when the downpour strangled suffocating lungs replacing air with a soaked anxiety, when the doors battened closed and heads disappeared inside, there was nothing left but rain and sea and sky.</p><p>People often thought realization came with rain. In naïve hearts succumbed to dreamed illusions and obstinate rejections of reality, they thought rain was cleansing. And perhaps it was. Perhaps, had this been a different school filled with different children from a different world, it might have been. Perhaps a lot of things would be different. But today, as Haknyeon stepped outside the comfort of his dorm’s common room and into the rain, he didn’t fall to his knees in repentance. He downed. </p><p>Thundering by with windswept hair the sting of flinging raindrops pelting into his face as he rode by the wrought iron gates on Terror, a midnight black mare which was, coincidentally, the only thing he brought him when he left his home to come to Genius. Terror’s feet pounded the earth into submission as she galloped through the storm, through the tall grasses and reeds itching Hak’s shins, and to the edge of the world resting on an unmarked cliffside. Hak’s hair blew wildly around his face, batting at his cheeks and bouncing with life as he flew across the shoreline, into the cold wet reminder of the day which met them. He sat bareback, nestled atop her shiny obsidian coat, hands fisted into her naked mane, unbridled and free. He wanted to scream into the wind billowing in a deafening roar against his ears, and so he did. He screamed himself silent until the shrieks didn’t sound like him anymore. </p><p>‘We need to talk,’ she had said when they left Taeyang and the others. Nothing more, nothing less. And he didn’t have the heart to answer her in that moment she so she took it as an olive branch, plainly telling him to meet her on the shoreline by the old lighthouse, the crumbling mass of ruins and moss, and he didn’t say no. He wondered why he didn’t say no. He was waiting for her, under the weighted branches of a tall tree, barely green in the spring, and his old friend Terror at his side, nipping at his feet. He stood there stiff and sodden, hair dripping over his forehead as streams of water ran down his face in thick torrents. </p><p>“I’m sorry.” </p><p>“You didn’t know,” he mumbled in response, face lifted toward the sky as it cried down upon his skin.  </p><p>“I said I’m sorry,” she repeated not knowing if he had fully caught her words. </p><p>“No,” he bit out abruptly, eyes finally meeting hers and a raging hatred swimming in them, one flaming so hot Jungeun thought it might fizzle against the storm. “<em>You</em> didn’t know,” he repeated, tongue sharp around the first word, an accusation really. </p><p>“I wouldn’t have-”</p><p>“You <em>shouldn’t</em> have,” he ground out through a tense jaw.  </p><p>“I didn’t have anything against-” she started to defend again. </p><p>“I?!” Hak asked her with a viciously sharp tongue which dripped the surprised acidic toxin of a man on the execution stand addressing his accuser. “I! I! It’s always been about YOU.” </p><p>“I didn’t-” she caught herself. “He wasn’t supposed to be a part of this.”</p><p>“That doesn’t change the fact that you can’t take it back.” </p><p>“But I-”</p><p>“Why are we out here, Jung?” </p><p>“I didn’t know where else to go without you being incapable of running away.” </p><p>“Me?” he asked. “Or you?”</p><p>She looked over at Terror with a sad smile and watched the mare stir restlessly in the rain. Terror had never particularly like rain, she remembered. Jungeun had, after all, been there when the<br/>
mare first met it and it had not been a pretty sight: the kicking and the bucking and the braying, quite like that one Delacroix come to life. </p><p>“A bit of both,” she answered him. </p><p>“To tell you the truth, I don’t think you give a damn about what you’re trying to say to me right now.” </p><p>“Then why did you come?”</p><p>Hak faltered for a moment. “What?”</p><p>“Why didn’t you just refuse to meet me?” she questioned. “Why didn’t you stay inside your world little warm world of denial and not step outside?” </p><p>“Because I thought I wanted to hear what you had to say for yourself,” he sighed, reaching a hand over to pat Terror’s neck where the mare had nudged his side. “But the second I saw your face I didn’t care anymore.” </p><p>Jungeun clucked her tongued. “You can’t seriously put this all on me?!” she flinched, hair now matted like his and eyes now fighting the barrage of tiny liquid missiles, lashes struggling against the storm to keep them at bay. “You think this is all my fault?!”</p><p>“Because it is your fault!” Hak screamed at her, the rain drops thick and heavy falling over his cheeks and plummeting down to the earth below. </p><p>“Are you kidding me!!” she yelled back, a crack of thunder behind her voice, fueling an angry passion which had ignited in her core. </p><p>“He was a good person!” Hak shouted, an audible raspy sob caught in his throat and lacing the words. “He didn’t deserve any of this!”</p><p>“How was I supposed to know?!” she tried to yell back but the torrent of rain pummeling down upon their heads chocked her as she shrieked, guttural and swamped. </p><p>“You went too far this time! There are some things that are off limits! He was off limits!”</p><p>“It’s not like I meant to!”</p><p>“IT DOESN’T MATTER!” he screamed, and if it weren’t for the slinging plea of his tone or the slightly welling in his eyes, she would have assumed it nothing but rage. “IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU MEANT TO HAPPEN BECAUSE OF WHAT DID HAPPEN!”</p><p>Jungeun stood. Her breath, ragged, stuck in her chest as she watched his eyes fall from the rage she expected, the rage they deserved to hold, to a soft despondent acceptance. No, no maybe it wasn’t acceptance at all, maybe it was submission. </p><p>“I HATE YOU!” he screamed, but there was no anger in it. He screamed his throat raw in the teeming regret of nostalgia.  “I hate you so fucking much. And I’m mad at you! I’m angry! I’m livid! But you don’t just stop caring about people because they FUCK UP and turn into assholes,” he fumbled then and she saw not only his voice drop but his body, crumpling in on itself in a desperate realization of loss. “NEVER,” he grit out before catching his breath. “Never would let anything actually happen to you,” came out in a whisper at the end. </p><p>She almost didn’t hear it, especially his last forlorn plea which escaped his lips, tumbling out like a promise echoed in moonlight or a lover’s kiss swept across the warm of a secret space between two bodies. But it was neither of those things, it was submission.  </p><p>“You know what? I’m done,” he muttered. “You can have it. Just-” he met her eyes. “Just… leave me alone.”</p><p>“No you can't give up. You can’t.” </p><p>“WHY?” he screamed his voice hoarse. “BECAUSE THEN IT WOULDN’T MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU?!” </p><p>“YOU’RE A FUCKING COWARD!” </p><p>“NEWS FLASH, JUNGEUN! EVERYBODY GIVES UP!”</p><p>She quieted then, blinking the rain from her eyes, the drops heavy against her eyelashes. </p><p>He got not even three ragged breathes in, body crumpling in on itself slightly, face obscured and voice barely audibly above the rain. “WHY AM I NOT ALLOWED TO GIVE UP??!” he bawled out in a loud plea, a desperation soaking it along with the sky. </p><p>“BECAUSE THAT MAKES ME WRONG!” she finally shouted. </p><p>And they both knew; they had been waiting for her to verbalize it but they both already knew. </p><p>“I- I never felt alone before,” he confessed. “And I know that’s insane because I definitely didn’t ever have anyone to begin with but I never actually felt alone until you left.”</p><p>“We decided to leave each other,” she defended half-heartedly not believing herself; the words became wicked the second she said them. </p><p>“I always knew everyone else would leave me but I never thought you would.” </p><p>It was perhaps the most sincere thing Haknyeon had ever said in his life, to anymore. The most soul bearing, heart wrenching, devastatingly true thing he had ever taken the care to say and it fucking ached. It ached so much. </p><p>“I don’t know you anymore,” he whispered, stepping back from her slowly, feet inching themselves away and it was with such shattered intention that she thought he might never come back. “I’m done with this. I’m done. You can just take it for all I care. I’ll go to Taeyang tomorrow.”</p><p>It hurt: the rain. Jungeun thought it hurt the way things ought to hurt when you deserved them. So she stood enduring it long after he had ridden away in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, some of her guilt might wash away with it.</p>
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<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Interesting Times</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Oopes, accidentally made Yves super hot - nothing I can do now - what a shame :))</p><p>This chapter is based on the fact that one of friends reminded me of how I used to give stick and pokes at boarding school so here!!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A party was a party, Haseul thought, unless it was at Genius. Then it was… what do you call fifty kids half-gone on liquor worth small houses stuffed into a room as sold as sin on a secret, remote island? It was a Factory celebration. What might one be celebrating? Death, debauchery, and diamonds. She weaved her way through the throngs of students packed into one of the only quad’s on campus, a sweeping lofty living area between the two separate bedroom suites and a balcony out back. The few rooms like this used to be safe houses with an exorbitant price to house, well, there was never any official record of who exactly had used these rooms before the Factory ended its bed and breakfast, but Haseul had been told that at least on one occasion a fleeing warlord has taken his morning espresso outside the double doors. </p><p>She glanced around the room, a flute of Moet in her hand, bracelet fallen down around her wrist and clinking the crystal as she moved. A pumping beat was almost hammering her heart, an intense reverberation of the sound dizzying her head. Or maybe that was the champagne? She settled on a couple in the corner by the small built-in bar, black marble and shining copper, tucked by the open balcony doors. The girl was propped up in his lap and most likely latched to the poor kid’s neck like a leech. God, some kids were not aware of a descent PDA parameters. And then she saw the shoes. </p><p>“What are you doing?” </p><p>The fourth year’s shoulders tensed, naked back muscles on display in the oddly neon green and pink lights of the space shadowing her figure, a flimsy silken white halter hanging low on her spine. She hunched over a boy’s lap, leather clad shins and knees folded under a taughtly short skirt stretching where she hovered above him on the chair, an ink dripped needle in her hand and a small bowl of black liquid resting on the boy’s thigh wedged between the two. Yves’ neck slowly turned, stiff guilty eyes languidly swaying around as her neck dipped to check over her shoulder, body not moving. </p><p>“Making friends,” Yves answered, clutching another needle, clean and glinting silver, between her teeth, lips opened around the sharp end. </p><p>“And who is this?” Haseul said looking at the boy.</p><p>“Zuho,” Yves answered nonchalantly and turned back to poke into the boy’s collarbone. “He was held back last year,” she added. </p><p>Haseul studied the boy’s skin more closely, watching Yves’ delicate hand stab into the fleshy canvas, finishing up the curve at the bottom of a five. “Is that a phone number?”</p><p>She was met with Yves’ mischievous smile. “The personal line for the one and only princess of the Monegasque royal family.” </p><p>“Yeah,” the boy, Zuho, snickered. “It’s funny, right?” </p><p>“…I thought there were four of them?”</p><p>“Only one that matters,” Yves responded, leaning back over Zuho’s neck. </p><p>Haseul hummed, tapping her foot twice on the stone of the balcony's threshold, wet from the storm that morning. “How much have you had to drink?” </p><p>Zuho eyed Haseul before shrugging in response. “She’s got steady hands,” he said in defense of his new friend. </p><p>“She’s a clandestine major. Of course, she had steady hands!” Haseul berated. “The girl broke into the Svalbard Seed Vault last year on a dare!” </p><p>This only resulted in the boy looking impressed. “Woah. You did that?” he turned to her in reverent awe. </p><p>“Piece of cake,” Yves replied with a shit eating grin, lapping up the attention and praise. </p><p>“Yves?” Haseul questioned again. </p><p>Said girl sighed and decided to play along, picking the needle from her mouth and holding it with the other. “How many glasses are in a bottle of champagne?” she asked. </p><p>“I don’t know? 5?”</p><p>“Okay, then 12.” </p><p>“Why are you doing this to me?” Haseul groaned. “We have a grad meeting tomorrow morning.” </p><p>Yves rolled her eyes. “It’s not like half those people aren’t here anyways.” </p><p>Zuho raised his hand which had been resting on Yves’ thigh to steady her and held his hand next to his head. “I’m here,” he smiled. </p><p>“Thank you,” Haseul bit out. “So helpful.” </p><p>Yves face then shifted as she noticed something, or someone, from across the sweaty, thundering room all bathed in bubbling giggles and shouts, flinging liquid from sparkling glasses and moving with the throng dancing bodies: a figure nestled in the pattern of a hunting scene on what must have been a medieval tapestry. </p><p>“Wait, you’re not done yet!” Zuho called out. “There’s still one more number.” </p><p>Yves whipped her head around with a grin, barking out a laugh which flitted on the airwaves like piano keys just gracefully pressed with fingertips. She was devastating chic girl, with the confidence of a general who served in guerrilla trenches and a brain akin to the fancies of John Nash. But when that look entered her eyes, when that vitriolic biting venom laced itself together upon her tongue, the girl was unstoppable. She locked gazes with Zuho, still rooted to the chair, shirt undone and slung open around his tanned chest, limply gracing his sides, jaw slack and face just so, so gullible that she wanted to grab his innocent little cheeks between her fingers and squeeze. </p><p>“Guess,” she offered with a chuckle, and swung around to face her prey. </p><p>“Oh my god, I can practically feel the headache of responsibility coming on,” Hyunjae breathed to himself, standing against the wall with what might as well have been the red focused laser of a sniper on his forehead. </p><p>“You prick!” Yves called out over the music and the squeals, stomping over with Haseul in tow, elbowing people left and right, making sure to step on one kid’s foot who didn’t move out of her warpath fast enough.</p><p>“Please refrain from discussing the repercussions my actions have on other people until I’m out of the room,” Hyunjae lamented when he was toe to toe with her scowling face “You at least owe me the curtesy of doing it behind my back, don’t you think?”</p><p>“You piece of shit,” she slurred, pocking the boy’s chest, needles long discarded to the floor, where exactly a mystery. “You’re lucky you’re pretty,</p><p>Haseul bounded up to grab Yves’ bicep, only then did Hyunjae realize she was a little off kilter. “I’m sorry about her,” the gov student excused. </p><p>“What are talking about?” Yves grunted, attempting to slip from the other’s hold. “I’m doing mighty fucking fine thanks to the marvels of modern medicine,” she announced.  </p><p>“She means she took like 5 Xanax before this with a swig of orange juice, which – now that I’m thinking about it - was probably more mimosa than orange juice…” Haseul paused.  “Hey, Yves?”</p><p>“Yes the light of my life?” Yves very seriously replied. </p><p>“Yeah, she’s fucking plastered.”</p><p>“You!” Yves yelled again when she recalled exactly what she was doing in front of Hyunjae.</p><p>“Can you-?” the boy motioned to the war machine in hells, gunning him down with nothing but her eyes. </p><p>“Nope!” Haseul threw back, backing away. “Have fun!”</p><p>“Come on!” Hyunjae shouted back at the girl, frustrated. “Are you serious?” </p><p>He found Yves in the exact same position with the exact same expression on her face once he turned away from Haseul’s retreat. </p><p>“I’ve got things to say to you,” she growled.  </p><p>Hyunjae raised his eyebrow, crossing his arms. “Is this about Haknyeon?” He asked. “Look - let me level with you - he told me to stop the other day.”</p><p>“What? No,” Yves furrowed her brow, confused. “This is about Singapore.”  </p><p>His abrupt laugh erupted in her face causing the girl to stumble ever so slightly, aghast at his audacity. </p><p>“Of course it is,” Hyunjae added, catching his breath. </p><p>“Take me seriously!” she whined, a full blown pout melting her face into a lazy, childish scowl. </p><p>“You know,” Hyunjae mused. “This is like the first time we’ve talked since all this started.”</p><p>“Is it?”</p><p>“Yeah. It kind of took over everything, didn’t it?”</p><p>Yves moved to lean against the wall beside him with a huff, still sulking but now a softer, gentler frown molding her ruby red lips. </p><p>“I guess,” she replied, considering the room before them, the jumping and the swinging and the shifting mass of her classmates all so carefree she wondered if they even knew what was going on. </p><p>He turned to face her after a second, head rolling on the wall to press his check against the cold, flat surface and there was a look of sincerely which caught her attention. “Are you seriously still worrying about the AMK?” </p><p>“Oh, they won’t catch me,” Yves retorted. “Over their dead bodies.” </p><p>“Isn’t it ‘my’?” Hyunjae asked. </p><p>“Hell no, I’m not dying,” Yves countered. </p><p>Hyunjae seemed so serious that it made her squirm, resting his palm against her bare shoulder. </p><p>The heat of his hand radiated through her skin as he earnestly implored her. “What happened? Are they looking for you?” </p><p>She shrugged him off and returned her gaze to the room. “I think Younghoon told Vivi,” she said simply after a moment.  </p><p>“If he found out, I would know.”</p><p>She shifted back to his figure, propped there beside hers, long black slacks running a parallel mirror to her tall black boots. Like they were suited, she distantly thought. Like they were partners, which, of course, they had been. But jobs aren’t supposed to end with two kids crawling their way out of the brush surrounding a diplomatic residence covered in torn finery shredded beyond repair, blood – not theirs mind you – and a sticky substance one could write off as honey. Maybe some people just didn’t work well together. </p><p>“Would you?” she taunted back, a bouncy tease on her tone. </p><p>Hyunjae, for all he was worth, looked utterly offended, so much so she knew he had tumbled right back into their banter like old time. “Yeah!” he yelled. “Are you underestimating me?” </p><p>“You didn’t know that gatehouse had a guard patrolling it.”</p><p>“Neither did you!”</p><p>“It wasn’t my job to plan to escape route!”</p><p>“Well, we wouldn’t have needed it if you didn’t blow your cover!”</p><p>“That old man was getting too handsy and you know it!” </p><p>“I didn’t pick him!” </p><p>They stopped their tennis match when someone cleared their throat from the side and found a good deal of less tipsy party goers sending them less than impressed looks. Hyunjae had the decency to incline his head in a small of apology while Yves glared down the closest person and flung a curtain of hair over her shoulder. </p><p>“Wow,” Hyunjae puffed out. “We really are enemy combatants.” </p><p>“If we really fighting…” Yves all but purred, patting his chest. “You wouldn’t last a second.” </p><p>“Oh, I know,” he laughed. “Neither did Mr. Handsy.” </p><p>“God, he so OLD!”</p><p>Hyunjae motioned to her scar with his hand, a jagged line running roughly the entire length from her palm to her elbow on the soft inside flesh of her right arm. She looked down at it confused and then back up at him. </p><p>“Sorry about throwing you off the gatehouse,” he said quietly. </p><p>“Sorry about blowing my cover,” she answered and then settled into the best form of companionate silence one could find in the middle of a Genius party. “Do you think it’ll always be like this?” she eventually asked. </p><p>He hummed. “Like what?” </p><p>She waited, thinking, and let the words she has been searching for come to her instead of digging them up with dirt caked fingernails. “Crazy,” she softly laughed to herself. </p><p>“May you live in interesting times,” Hyunjae mumbled.  </p><p>“Best be careful, pretty boy.”  </p><p>“Is that advice or a warning?” Hyunjae grinned at her.</p><p>Yves in all her drunken wisdom, returning the smile with a knowing look on her face that seemed more appropriate on that of decrepit monk than a beautiful young women dressed in thigh high leather in boots. “Isn’t it always a bit of both?” </p><p>“I see,” he nodded back. “忠告.” </p><p>She shot him back a playful finger gun, the next words slipping from her rancorous toothy smirk: “Now you got it.”</p>
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<a name="section0024"><h2>24. It's Tradition, That's Why</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>For reference: Roa from HINAPIA/Pristin, Seungyeop from E'Last, and Yibo from UNIQ</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The air was cold for the early dredges of summer, a blistering heat not making its way between the cracks of a long clinging winter chill, which, tooth and nail, gripped the island in its tender, frozen claws. Jungeun blinked back the involuntarily welling in her eyes as her body was heaved, dragged, and all but drawn and quartered through narrow stone halls, down steep and jagged stairs, and into an echoing, what she assumed was vaulted, room. Rough hands grasped her biceps so tight she felt the intense pumping of the blood in her veins as it attempted to continue its flow down from her shoulders to her wrists. Sure, it wasn’t the first time she was abruptly dragged from her bed in the morning, bare feet and brazen legs kicking out against a dark blanket of nothingness, the sheets spilling onto the floor along with her and warm pillow forgotten. But this was certainly taking the longest amount of time.<br/>
There were four of them, she thought, or at least three, the different footsteps and rustling fabric alerted her ears to their presence, indicating a couple different gates. Her blindfold was removed and before she registered the dark, and quite frankly rank, crypt of mossy stone, the empty wine bottles stuffed with dripping candle wax, or the spiked baseball bats resting against the wall, she noticed the hanging black fabric. </p><p>“You’re wearing cloaks,” she deadpanned a second later. </p><p>“It’s venue appropriate!” one of the five masked figures yelled back, earning a slap on the arm from the one standing beside them. </p><p>“Now she knows it’s you!” they chided, hissing into the ear of the first cloaked person. </p><p>Jungeun sighed, adjusting her eyes to the harsh onslaught of the fire lit space, the candle filled altar in the corner causing a glare in the reflection of her left eye. “Hi Seung, hi Roa,” she drawled  at the two masked figures before her, draped in silken black. </p><p>They immediately huffed and pulled the plaster masks, animal like monsters of varied colors, from their visages. </p><p>“Really!?” Roa yelled her counterpart, the two of them standing at the right side next to three others. “We went to all this trouble!” </p><p>“I’m sorry!” Seungyeop yelled back at her. </p><p>Taeyang then pulled his own mask off with a sharp wrist flick, dangling it in his hand. “Maybe this was too much.” </p><p>“No, no,” Jungeun tried to reassure him from her position, strapped to a chair in front of the line of fourth year Clandestines. “I appreciate the effort.” </p><p>“Oh, cut your crap,” Yves’ face appeared next, discarding the disguise with little to no hesitation. “This is stupid and we all know it.” </p><p>“The cloaks are nice,” Jungeun sheepishly offered. </p><p>“They itch,” was Roa’s flat response. </p><p>“Who’s that?” Jungeun asked, inclining her head toward the fifth, still secret, figure standing at the far left. </p><p>“Can’t we have a little mystery left?” Seungyeop whined at Taeyang and Yves, who were, very clearly the two in charge. </p><p>“It’s Yibo, isn’t it?” </p><p>“FUCK!” said boy yelped, throwing his mask onto the cavern floor so hard, it cracked and shattered against the stone, flying little tiny pieces of black and gold plaster across the floor. </p><p>“Are we not supposed to be better at this?” Taeyang chastised, glaring down each of the four others flanking his sides. He exhaled and leaned back to rest the tip of his elbow against an old limestone casket. </p><p>Jungeun eyed the raised grave with suspicion, the undercroft littered with them but the Quartermaster’s nonchalant leaning display of apathy catching her attention. “And who’s that?” </p><p>“Relax,” Yves replied. “It’s a Cenotaph. All the alums get Alkaline Hydrolysis.” </p><p>“Unless they can’t find your body!” Seungyeop chirped. </p><p>“Yes,” Roa said. “Unless they can’t find <em>your</em> body.” 	</p><p>“Not that I don’t just adore catacombs,” Jungeun interrupted. “Because Paris really is quite lovely, especially in the spring, but what the fuck dudes? I have a test tomorrow.” </p><p>“On mark evaluation and execution – Yes, we remember,” Yibo said.  </p><p>“Yves?” Roa snickered. “Wanna retake that one?” </p><p>A devastatingly horrified look passed over Yves’ face. “HE WAS OLDER THAN TIME!” she screeched, the sound shrill and bouncing back in the damp cavern to assault their ears. </p><p>“Good lord,” Taeyang muttered, eyes cast on the ceiling in annoyance. “You guys are the worst council ever elected.” </p><p>“My roommate’s a gov student and you expected me not to cheat the polls?” Yibo asked, throwing his hands in the manner much in the manner of a man blatantly lying on the stand because he knew could get away with it. </p><p>“We all knew you were cheating anyways,” Taeyang groaned, rubbing his temples. “I was just too preoccupied to do anything about it.” </p><p>“Hey,” Roa butted in. “Yves is the ASN chair, she’s valid.” </p><p>The other turned to her with a genuine smile, oddly sincere in the moment they shared between them. “Hey, thanks man.” </p><p>Seungyeop eyed Jungeun across the crypt, distant whistle of wind sounding in the rusted vents, and shrugged. “We wanted to make it special.” </p><p>Jungeun paused. “Make what special? This is hazing, right?” </p><p>The elder ignored her, a wistful look falling over his eye. “We were going to chant and the whole deal. I even looked up this Latin summoning ritual.” </p><p>“Okay, hold on,” Yves turned to him. “I was NEVER going to do that.” </p><p>“I sent you the lyric printout last night and you thanked me!” Yibo added, coming to Seungyeop’s defense. </p><p>“It’s basic society manners! And Latin isn’t even meant to be spoken!” she yelled back. </p><p>“I mean it’s not,” Roa muttered back with a shrug. </p><p>Yves threw her arm out toward the other, gesturing to Roa with gusto as if to say ‘See, she gets it’. </p><p>“Alain Delon held all his QM meetings in Latin…” Seungyeop mumbled. </p><p>“SHUT UP, SEUNG!” both Yibo and Yves yelled in response. </p><p>“What’s going on?!” Jungeun shouted out, frustrated and sleepy and getting a headache from all the bickering. 	</p><p>"I think we all wanted to have a little more fanfare, but I guess this is as good as it’s going to get: Jungeun,” he straightened his shoulders, a serious look schooling his face into an emotionless professionalism. “I’m giving you QM.” </p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>Taeyang looked confused, glancing between Seungyeop and Roa on his right and Yves and Yibo on his left before he turned back to the third year, cheek bones aggressively shadowed in the casting flicker of the flames. “You’re the new Quartermaster, Jungeun.” </p><p>Was it an honor? Was it a privilege or a sentence? There were a lot of wonderful things, beautifully impossible things, granted to someone with that title. It was almost a God-given blessing given by a king, sword on shoulders and that whole sort of deal. Of course, with any gift, there were also obligations and obstacles and trials: not to say they weren’t overridden by the glamour and the prestige and the goddamn pedigree. </p><p>“I don’t deserve it,” she said into the council’s stunned silence.  </p><p>“I’m sorry, what?” Yves threw out. </p><p>“I don’t.” </p><p>“Jungeun,” Taeyang crossed his arms. “We don’t have time for this. We really need to-” </p><p>When they were younger, Jungeun and Haknyeon, they were fast friends, thrown together by prestigious bloodlines and thrown in the quiet corner of an antique, smoked mirror covered dining room. They learned to be friends, one might say, learned to accept each other as the inevitable interaction of a small circle: suitable company vetted by their families. And it was  a bit of a dying world; the old rich and the exalted historically tied gentry was waning in the face of Nouveau Riche. And neither of them minded, Jungeun and Haknyeon, the diners and the parties and fundraisers spent just the two of them while the adult folk played house. She had always shown up in dresses must too flashy for her liking and he had always helped her destroy them: mud by the Romanesque statute at the end of his property line, the crème brûlée blowtorch kept in her butler’s pantry, this and that.  And they grew closer, to understand each together, Jungeun and Haknyeon. She learned what exactly it meant to bear his name and he learned the dirty, filthy secrets of her inherited past. Jungeun had been there when his brother was sent away, cut out, disavowed and ostracized. She had been the shoulder he cried on. She still remembered the feeling of his tiny tears dripping onto her skin. So, she did the only thing she could to make it right again. </p><p>“Hak deserves it.” </p><p>She was met with slack jawed and wide eyed fourth year Clandestines, the best of the best and the elected council of the Quartermaster as well as the reigning QM himself, and they were utterly speechless. </p><p>“He stopped it from escalating,” she explained slowly, eyes trained to the floor, a weight she couldn’t quite name settling upon her shoulders. Maybe it had been there all along and she just never quite noticed it. “I know it seems like neither of us did but he stopped. He stopped before I went too far and I still did it anyways.”</p><p>“Jungeun…” Yves stepped forward hesitantly before the younger began to speak again, shaky words that somehow still held the most conviction the third year had ever had. </p><p>“He never went over the line,” she continued. “He didn’t hold it against Yein and I know you don’t know who Yein is but she’s kind of important. To both of us I guess.” </p><p>“What are you trying to tell me?” Taeyang asked her. </p><p>“He deserves the title,” she said. “And I think you should give it to him. That’s why I’m…” her voice trailed off for a second, as if it had tumbled over the side of precipice in a split second, but then she gathered the air in her lungs and met his eyes finally. “That’s why I resign,” she finished with a resolute nod. </p><p>“Are you sure? You won’t be able to take it back.”</p><p>“I’m sure.”</p><p>“Do you realize what you’re doing.”</p><p>Jungeun gave him an odd look then, that Taeyang swore he had never seen a Genius kid wear in all his years. “For the first time I think I do,” she almost whispered back.</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Make Your Own Confetti</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Reference again cause I'm trash for too many people: Jisun (Fromis-9), Yuvin (Myteen/BOY), Heechan (DKB), Yebin (DIA)</p><p>Also, completely inspired by the meme of the CIA who has, unknowingly, been using black highlighters all these years <br/>https://politics.theonion.com/cia-realizes-its-been-using-black-highlighters-all-thes-1819568147</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Eric hadn’t known the econ department bolstered a secret corporate espionage club full of a small amount of like-minded individuals prepared to apart the few companies in which their families were not major investors, but then again who did know? Beside of course the apparent president Yebin, one of his favorite fourth year women who marched around making deals like a fae and collecting debts like the mob. How had Eric come to know a smattering of the powerfully intimidating fourth year females of Genius? It was simple; he had an older sister. And so, he was, when open season had commenced for extracurricular society recruitment, mysteriously left an ominous, and rather beautifully penned, letter. He hadn’t known gold ink shined so lavishly in harsh LED lights. It had been sealed with an embossed wax stamp that he took to mean a sign of the club’s age.. well that and their need to flamboyantly and pretentiously flaunt their organization with a brand and a goddamn stamp. Who still used wax stamps besides jilted Russian poets writing love notes to their once eternal flames and his very own, perplexedly blind, grandfather? </p><p>And there were other clubs, surely there were other societies, but his sister had insisted, aggressively and without mercy for opposition, he look out for this exact seal and this exact logo. Personally, he thought the griffin was overused and the Latin was just getting tacky at this point. Where’s the creativity? The imagination? The Basque and the ancient Avestan? Anyways, small journey later he found himself before a large wooden door, which appeared so heavy he wasn’t sure the hinges wouldn’t snap and break right off the wall if he breathed on it, and knocked. </p><p>“Over here, silly,” Yebin giggled from behind him. </p><p>Eric whipped around to see the girl leaned against a stone archway, a jointed portrait swept open into the hall in a wide pivot. He raised his hand, upturned palm, in a motion of question toward the scene, Yebin’s warmly red tinged hair almost glowing in the significantly darker passage and crossed ankles framing her pearl rimmed bobby socks.</p><p>“Oh, there’s nothing behind that door. It’s way too heavy. Can’t open it,” she waved him off. “Besides it’s not very secret, is it?”  </p><p>She motioned Eric over with a delicate wave, piles of rings stretching knuckle to knuckle clinking as her hand swayed. They were jade and ivory, opal and amethyst, bands of silver and copper and gold strung and woven interchangeably through each other. As he approached her, slightly aloft his head and standing in a whole of stone above a velvet magenta chaise resting against the cream half wall trims, resting indolently against the inside frame of a priceless masterpiece, he stopped to eye the piece of furniture which separated them and then down at his own feet with a small pout. </p><p>“My shoes are dirty,” he said. </p><p>“Take them off,” she shrugged. </p><p>“But-”</p><p>“Just leave them at the portrait,” she cut him off with a smile. “It’s fine.” </p><p>He bent down in the hall to unlace his black dress shoes, revealing horridly bright red and yellow argyle socks before picking up his shoes in his left hand with a sigh and straightening. </p><p>“Oh, those are…”</p><p>“They were a gift,” Eric replied tightly. </p><p>“Sure. Sure yeah.” </p><p>She held out a jeweled hand to him, Eric stepping gingerly on the chaise and taking it for her to help heave him into the passage. She winked at him and swung the painting shut. </p><p>It was dark. Only for a moment, but it was that type of deep hungry dark which eat the world around it like a black whole where even the sounds dissipated into the void. It would have scared him if it were everlasting, a sure sign of the apocalypse, but then again, it was only for a moment. </p><p>“Hyunjae is excited you’re coming,” Yebin said after pulling a flashlight from the wall, empty cylindrical metal holder sitting against the stone.  </p><p>“He’s here?” </p><p>“Well normally yes, but not right now” Yebin paused, starting down the darkened hall. “I suspended him”</p><p>“Oh,” Eric breathed in understanding. “The whole QM thing?”</p><p>“No,” she correct, hand flatly resting against a wooden wall in front of them. “He annoyed me,” she finished pushing it open. </p><p>They all but fell through the back of a bookcase, lined of course with red leather bound first editions and volumes upon volumes of pretty little gold numerals all line up in a row. It would have looked the part of any other library or study in any another estate or private country club, save for the remarkably well persevered diary pages of history’s greatest feats of capitalist exploitation and historical bank currency schematics. Coins and gold, invariably, making their way into glass cases and tiny shadowboxes betwixt and between the novels. </p><p>There was a rather large black and white photograph, a bit grainy, of four men with blindingly white smiles standing on a beach somewhere in variations of a sailor’s naval uniform, untucked and wild, a hat or two thrown into the fluffily clouded sky above the waves. And this would have been oh so charming, sitting in the place of honor above the fireplace’s mantel with jade dragons on either side and a set of silver candlesticks, had the plague beneath said picture not clearly delineated involvement in the Bay of Pigs. It was funny Eric mainly noticed this photo first, and not the deep brown desk spanning the room like a dining table above a needlepoint rug or the three students seated at it. But then again, Hyunjae had kept mentioning the Gulf of Oman earlier in a rant Eric had eventually tuned out and maybe water was just… on his mind. </p><p>“These three are on bench duty today,” Yebin turned to him and patted his shoulder reassuringly. “You, my dear new friend, get the honor of helping them.” </p><p>“Is this hazing?” the first year asked her, eyeing the kids seated at the table wearily. </p><p>“We’re not allowed to haze anymore,” one of the boys slumped over the wood, dragging his Oxford clad arms across the surface as he dropped his chest and head onto it. </p><p>Yebin shot the boy a look before refocusing her attention on Eric. “Answer to Yuvin and no one else.”</p><p>“What about me?!” the boy from before whined. </p><p>Yebin completely ignored the boy and kept talking without so much as a twitch in her eye from the outburst. “He’s the acting officer and the rest of them are idiots. No offense Jisun,” she added turning to the girl. </p><p>“None taken,” Jisun nodded back.  </p><p>“There’s three of us!” the same kid from before yelled. “I’m the rest!”  </p><p>Yuvin shrugged toward Eric’s vacant and awkward glance and added, “You get to make confetti.” </p><p>“I demand better treatment. I’m starting a worker’s union. This is despotism!” </p><p>“Heechan, I swear to god,” Yebin groaned, grabbing the collar of the boy’s shirt and dragging his body back fully into the chair with a yank. “If you weren’t so good at finding stock market patterns, I would murder you myself.” </p><p>Jisun raised her hand, a highlighter resting in the space between her index and middle finger, dangling precariously over her pristinely white blouse. “I’ll do it,” she offered. </p><p>“Wait, I have a question,” Heechan’s hand shot up next to Jisun’s waving in the air like an excited, impatient child. </p><p>Yebin looked offended. “What am I? Your teacher?” she chastised. </p><p>Yuvin sighed and glanced at Heechan out of his periphery. “What’s your question, Yang?”</p><p>“Why isn’t he wearing any shoes?” the younger boy asked, pointing at Eric. </p><p>In the next passing second, all their heads swiveled to meet Eric’s flamboyantly sock clad feet. </p><p>“What on earth?” Jisun mumbled beneath her breath. </p><p>“Okay. Chop, chop,” Yebin interrupted with a clap. “Time to get to work my lovely detainees.” </p><p>Two hours later, filled with some small talk which consisted more of bickering than anything else, a laughably vat like amount of caffeine (from their very own espresso machine), and countless back cracks, Eric found himself understanding exactly what Yuvin had meant by making confetti. </p><p>“I didn’t think I’d be spending my Saturday mornings shredding corporate documents and government issued bonds,” Eric mused, stuffing another handful into the machine, the tiny teeth eating away at what could possibly be millions of dollars in contracts, secrets, and trusts. </p><p>“You know what?” Heechan yelled causing the younger to flinch and pull a half-eaten clump of ripped pages from the shredder. “FUCK GUTENBURG!” he continued, throwing down his stack onto the desk.</p><p>“Yang Heechan!” Jisun shouted from the other end of the table where she was going through and systematically choosing papers out of a thick manila folder, half the pages going to Heechan and Yuvin who were un-retracting retracted information for later publicity and the other half to Eric who sat with a cumbersome shredder between his legs. “Leave Johannes Gensfleischout of this,” she chided. </p><p>“What is this?! An anti-Luddite space!” Heechan argued back, leaning into his chair like a post-lunch Oligarch around a board meeting for radiation control measures he was not happy to enact. “How retrogressive of you! What did I do to deserve this?”</p><p>“So much,” Yuvin answered with a shake of his head. “Just… so much.” </p><p>“Hey,” Jisun threw out, setting down a thick stack so heavy it clunked against the table like a brick, half of the sheets full of doctored un-retracted information and scribbles. “If you were given a million dollars, what would you do with it?”  </p><p>Yuvin leaned over the arm of his chair with a thoughtful look. “Is this a hypothetical?”</p><p>“No. I’ve been gifted four and I’m looking for ideas,” she responded, mirroring the other to meet him halfway across the open space between them, chin in her palm and elbow resting on the wooden chair arm.  </p><p>“Bathe in cognac but also drink cognac.”</p><p>Eric met Heechan’s statement with bemusedly confused face. “Why??” </p><p>The second year smirked. “That’s holistic therapy, baby.” </p><p>“Any other ideas?” Jisun asked. </p><p>“Buy and destroy a small island?” Yuvin offered. </p><p>“Why do I have to destroy it?” </p><p>“Yeah,” Eric appended. “Why can’t she just live there?” </p><p>“Or make it an offshore vault for tax poachers?” Heechan added. </p><p>Yuvin thought about it for a moment before meeting Jisun’s gaze again. “Because blowing up stuff is fun?” </p><p>“He has a point,” Eric said into the ticks of silence. </p><p>“Okay,” Jisun decided, retreating to slouch in her seat, finger moving to tap her chin. “But where should this island be?” </p><p>Heechan smiled again and for the hours Eric had known him, he had come to understand it wasn’t necessarily as innocent as it seemed. “I know a place.” </p><p>---</p><p>Jungeun’s hand rapped softly on the door room. While she waited for the other to answer, she shifted between her feet nervously, kicking at the floor with a scuff of her shoe and exhaled breaths of anxious tension. The door swung open and almost closed immediately before she kicked out her leg to catch it before the frame. </p><p>“Please...” she pleaded to the ajar sliver. </p><p>She heard a grumble and then Yein was opening the door for her again, back turned and retreating into her room, leaving Jungeun at the threshold. She walked into the space and found Yein seated cross legged on the end of her bed, folding laundry, socks neatly tucked together and skirts stacked on her left side to be hung later. The girl hummed softly as she picked the clothes up from her basket. </p><p>“I’m sorry,” Jungeun blurted. </p><p>“For what exactly,” Yein said forcefully, more of a demand than an inquiry and still not looking at the other girl.  </p><p>“I’m sorry I forgot what this place does to people and I’m sorry I keep forgetting. I-” Jungeun stopped and moved to sit down beside her, the bed dipping under her weight. “Hak’s a good guy,” she said, gaze trained down into her clasped hands, thumbs rubbing round and round each other in circles.  </p><p>Yein’s shoulders softened slightly. “I know,” she said.  </p><p>“I didn’t mean to hurt him.”</p><p>“Well…” Yein responded, looking up and waiting for her friend to finish. </p><p>“I don’t think he should alone right now,” Jungeun answered. </p><p>“Listen. He said some things. I said some things…” The two girls were now making eye contact. “But this isn’t really any of your business.” </p><p>“Yeah, it is.”</p><p>Yein raised her eyebrow. </p><p>"Not like that, come on. I’m trying to make amends or whatever.” </p><p>“Convincing,” was all Jungeun received in response.  </p><p>“Just talk to him, please,” she begged. “Or hear him out at least if he comes to you.” </p><p>Yein glanced down at her laundry again, slowly and tactfully folding a shirt in on itself. “Why would he come to me?” she asked softly. </p><p>“He will,” Jungeun said confidently after a moment. “Just wait.”  </p>
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<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Family Ties, Bound and Unforgiving</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>welcome to I don't have betas and don't know how to proofread</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Soft chattering and faint echoing whispers of conversation drifted toward her ears as Yein sat mindlessly picking at her food, staring off at the wall a few table away, blearily registering the day even since Jungeun had woken her up entirely too early that morning. She had been deep asleep, having passed out the night before exhausted in the middle of her laundry, leaving the early folded piles on the end of her bed, curled into a small cocoon of pillows in the corner. She drifted in and out of conscious thought before a figure plopped down in the seat beside her. She looked up to find Hak, the same listless gaze, staring at the wall with her. Yein glanced around them quickly, checking the faces littering the dining hall. </p><p>“Hi?”</p><p>Hak blinked and glanced at her. “I got it?” he muttered. </p><p>She set down her fork on the plate with a clink. “What?”</p><p>“I got the QM?”</p><p>“Oh my god, congratulations!” Yein erupted, wrapping her arms around his neck tightly and pulling him into a hug, slightly wresting his body from the chair and completely forgetting any awkward tension the two might have. “I’m so proud of you!” </p><p>“Yeah, my grandfather showed up and-”</p><p>“Your grandfather is here?!” she exclaimed, unable to help herself, arm winding down from his shoulders. </p><p>A couple heads turned to them, eyes sharp and discerning, pointed murmurs shooting between them like arrows. It wasn’t exactly a secret now who should and shouldn’t be seen together since the rivalry began, diving a quarter of the school in kind with corridor tiffs and lunch time debates. </p><p>“He came this morning,” Hak answered, “Showed up, clapped me on the back mumbling about tradition and legacy, and all of a sudden he was saying he needed to give me his old Quartermaster patch - a bit of history he said.”</p><p>“Taeyang didn’t tell you?” she asked. </p><p>Hak furrowed his brow. “No? That’s why I came though. My grandfather, he’s throwing a ball… apparently. I was wondering if you would come.” </p><p>“Is the whole school not invited?”</p><p>“Yeah they are, but I wanted to ask you myself,” he smiled. </p><p>She had missed that smile. “Who am I to say no to the new Quartermaster?” </p><p>Now, when a generational patriarch of the reigning family of QMs came back to school - a notorious alumni in his own right even without the clandestine title - and demanded to throw a party - entirely on his own expenses and planning of course - for his grandson, you listened to him. You didn’t snub Mr. J. No one did. Haknyeon’s grandfather was, and the word should never be used lightly, a visionary. He understood people to a fault, and all their faults as well. He moved the family from Hong Kong when Hak was all but 6 and established a life transnationally, well a Genius version of transnational which is to say a nameless, faceless power in every city. He has big, bushy eyebrows and a marbled grey five-o-clock shadow dusting his cheeks. A suave, tailored man who walked like a king, and might as well have been one. He was charming, and brutal, and ruthless. And… Hak was absolutely terrified by him. </p><p>“Are you going to do anything?” he asked his grandfather, standing in a freshly pressed Armani suit in the Factory’s ballroom, a litany of streaming dresses and liquors pouring over the room. </p><p>“About what?” he laughed.</p><p>“Longguo.” </p><p>Hak couldn’t miss the abrupt tremor of his grandfather’s hand sloshing liquid over the rim of the glass nor could he have missed the tense, gripping of his jaw. “I told you I didn’t want to hear that name, didn’t I?” 	</p><p>“You’re not going to help him?” Hak asked. </p><p>“There’s power in forgetting,” his grandfather replied emotionless. “Best leave that boy where he belongs in the past.” </p><p>“But he’s family. He’s your grandson.” </p><p>His grandfather placed a heavy hand on his shoulder with a huff and a deliriously vicious grin. “I only have one now.” </p><p>“I hope you know that I live in all the memories you tried to bury.”</p><p>And his grandfather laughed again, right in his face. “I sure as hell didn’t get you the shovel. Now,” he continued, retreating his arm to his side. “I really should greet dear, old Tiffany. Where is that lovely woman?” and he was off into the crowd.  </p><p>Before catching sight of his long parted friend, Hak’s grandfather bumped into a young woman, white and coral dress delicately hanging from her shoulders in wisps and a large gold flower in her hair.</p><p>“Pardon me, dear. I’ve become terribly clumsy with age.” </p><p>“It’s quite alright, Mr. J,” she bowed her head with a smile. “Pleasure to meet you.” </p><p>“Oh, you know my name. Does my reputation precede me or do you know Haknyeon?” </p><p>“I’m… a friend,” she answered. </p><p>“Lovely!” he clapped. “Then I should be very glad if you would accompany to find Tiffany. I can’t seem to spot her anywhere.” </p><p>“Of course, sir. I’d love to.” </p><p>They circled the ballroom, Yein on the old man’s arm, smiling and laughing at his witty remarks and tales of Genius days gone by and it was fun, for a while, to pretend that she he might know who she really was or what she was to Hak - even if she didn’t quite know the details of the latter point. His deep chuckle caught her attention quickly, and her head swiveled, long drop earrings brushing the side of her neck as she moved. She saw Jungeun, deep red silken dress wrinkled at the bottom where she held it, a blazer hanging on her small figure, and hair in a wild frenzy of strands strewn about her hairline, pulling a boy by the hand from the secluded balcony door in the corner, his suit equally rumbled and hair equally tousled. A second later she noticed it was Haknyeon. </p><p>“She’s ambitious that one,” Hak’s grandfather told her, patting Yein’s hand where it rested in the crux of his elbow. “Half wild and married to impulse like a society girl should be,” he paused to take a long dragging swig from his champagne flute. “It’ll be the death of her… but a good death,” he added with a smile.  </p><p>His eyes trailed after the swishing train of her gown as she made her way through the students, alone now, and over to the other side of the ballroom where Jinsoul and Heejin waited, boisterous laughter rocketing into the air. </p><p>“My wife’s diamonds will look awfully fetching on her, don’t you think?” Haknyeon’s grandfather mused. </p><p>“I beg your pardon?”</p><p>“They’ve practically been married since they were six,” he laughed. “All but the rings, of course.” </p><p>“I hadn’t known they were that close…”</p><p>“They were raised together after all,” he answered. “Excuse me, I don’t quite recall getting your name dear?</p><p>“Oh,” Yein slipped her hand away. “That doesn’t matter. Enjoy the evening, sir,” she excused herself, as gracefully as one could do with a spinning head and five inch heels. “I hope you find Tiffany.” </p><p>She walked away from the man, all but running toward the door when her waist was grabbed and swiveled in a circle. She stumbled and caught herself on tuxedo clad shoulder and looked up to find herself in Hak’s arms, the boy’s wry smile lighting itself up in the small space between them. She got caught in his eyes, held there like a fly in a web, impossible to move. </p><p>“Care to dance?” he asked her, guiding her arm up to his shoulder and grabbed the other in his own. </p><p>“Hak, I-”</p><p>“Thank you for coming,” he said, spinning them around slowly in a waltz turn on the tiled floor. “I see you met my grandfather,” he added with a wink.”</p><p>“Hak-”</p><p>“He’s being awful cordial tonight but I’m not sure about it. I don’t normally trust smiles on that man’s face. And about my step brother, Longguo, he-”</p><p>“Haknyeon, listen,” she interrupted sternly and they both stopped all of a sudden, a resolute mass of student in the center of rolling, spinning celebrators, two of which she distantly catalogued as Haseul and Juyeon, the former leading the latter in a clunky attempt at a foxtrot. </p><p>“Are you okay?”</p><p>“I don’t even know your favorite color,” she said. </p><p>He bristled, lowed her hand and dropping his arm from her waist. “What?”</p><p>“I don’t know how you take your coffee,” she continued quietly. “Or what your favorite book was when you were little.” </p><p>“Yein, what are you-”</p><p>“Where’s your jacket?” she asked. When he didn’t respond she took a step backward. “I think I should go, Hak. Enjoy your party.”</p><p>“Yein? Yein!” he called out at her retreating steps; the click of her heels was drowned out by the music. “Where are you going?!” he shouted after her, but she didn’t stop. </p><p>He was left standing all alone in the center of a tumbling circle, warm receding from his hand and a party to host, wondering what on earth had happened. </p><p>--- 15 minutes earlier ---</p><p> </p><p>“God, it’s so fucking windy!” Hak cursed into the tumultuous air, whipping his hair frenetically like a crazed child hell bent on fussing it beyond recognition. “Why cant we do this inside?” </p><p>Jungeun stood next to him, leaving elbows on the railing parallel to Hak’s own, the cold stone seeping into her skin. She ignored it, wrestling down the urge to shiver before it crept up to much to control. Hak huffed out a scoff and shrugged off his own blazer to drape over her shoulders.  </p><p>“Thanks.”</p><p>“No problem.” </p><p>They lapsed into silence again. </p><p>“I wanted to say sorry, for what it’s worth,” she said. “And I know my apology might not be worth anything anymore but I still want to give it to you.” </p><p>“You already did, didn’t you?” </p><p>“What do you-”</p><p>“The position, Jung. I know you gave it to me.” </p><p>“How did you-”</p><p>“You think I didn’t figure it out?”</p><p>“It was Yibo wasn’t it?” she grounded out. </p><p>“Yeah…” he laughed out and she laughed too. </p><p>The wind was stronger, howling around them. Jungeun pulled his blazer tight across her chest and held on. </p><p>“Why’d you do it?” he eventually asked. “Was it pity?”</p><p>“No, no,” she shook her head. “I just want you to realize that we’re family. And every time you think of you disappoint someone or that you aren’t enough I want you to know that I’m saying this now, as your family… you make so proud to know you.” </p><p>“Oh cut the sappy shit, Jung.” </p><p>“Can I do anything? For Long?” </p><p>He paused to wring his hands together and sighed a deep chested, full lung expelling sigh. “You know, that’s already more than my grandfather offered. I’ll think of something. I always do.” </p><p>“He really didn’t deserve it,” she confessed. “I was wrong.” </p><p>Hak reeled back with a mock gasp, hand clutched to chest soap opera style. “Did the great Kim Jungeun just admit to being wrong?!” </p><p>“Yes, you loser,” she snorted, slapping his arm. “So take it and shut up.” </p><p>“‘Shut up and take it’ should be your campaign slogan for ASN chair.” </p><p>She immediately burst out in a sputter of amusement. “Right?!” </p><p>And maybe it was all a little better in that moment, just a little. Forgiveness was hard, it was really hard, even exceptionally hard sometimes. But so was loneliness. Hak wanted his friend back as badly as he wanted atonement for all things which had transpired and perhaps they came two fold, joined together so tightly one was indistinguishable from the other. Burning ash in the lungs, poison laced windpipes, and a couple hearty bruises later, here they were. Still standing and, most remarkable of all, laughing together into the wind rolling off a sleepless sea.</p>
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<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Frame: Dented</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Heyo, it's been a while. <br/>People have lives and do things<br/>Anyways, here's this nonsense !</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first year smattering of courses were unique, base level and a mere foot in the proverbial pond, which was, of course, freezing and lined along the bottom with the only the sharpest of river rocks. The first year courses were meant to be simple, as simple as one could get at a place like the factory. And more often than not, they were a mélange, a mix of disciplines, prospective engineers and haughty bio-chemists and entirely too serious medics  stuffed together, economics gurus and clandestine wannabes, government prodigies and cyber enthusiasts. Fragility of the Human Body was a medical drip-in with a considerable population of soon-to-be bio-chemists in the mix if they so wished (which they did). Heejin and Hyunjin were currently taking said class. Heejin and Hyunjin were currently being tutored by their friend’s love sick puppy of a shadow for said class. Heejin and Hyunjin were currently, at that very moment, attending said class. And as Jinsoul waited outside the lecture theater for her girls, she saw the reason Heejin and Hyunjin needed said tutoring for said class. </p><p>“Hey, you.”</p><p>Hwall looked around himself, glancing behind and to the sides finding no one before returning to Jinsoul’s scowl and pointing at himself with a titled head. “Me?”</p><p>“Yeah, you.” </p><p>“Hyunjae is in the field by the archives?” </p><p>“No,” Jinsoul huffed. “I want to speak with you.” </p><p>“Okay,” Hwall replied hesitantly, shifting his weight between his legs. “Why?” he asked after a second when the fourth year didn’t respond. </p><p>“Why do you think?” Jinsoul drawled back. </p><p>“Hyunjin stabbed me first!” he immediately defended. </p><p>Jinsoul remained unimpressed. “I know she did.” </p><p>“Then…” he paused, nervously running a hand throw his hair and hoping the girl would fill in the rest of his thought. “What do you want?” he asked, once she had made it obvious that was not going to happen. </p><p>Jinsoul grabbed his elbow and pulled in the other side of the doorway, behind the swung open thick oak of the entrance in a small little alcove lined with black and white etchings of the central nervous system, something eerie about the childlike quality of the scribblings. Hwall and Sunwoo, the latter having been commandeered and pulled to a  Fragility session a couple weeks prior because the former needed emotional support in a class with two fawning girls from ‘the traitor’s’ team. </p><p>“Are you not the reason my girls are failing this class?” Jinsoul raised her eyebrow. </p><p>“Failing?!” he blurted. “They’re both getting a B!” </p><p>“And they should be getting As, don’t you think?” she asked. “Unless you think my girls don’t deserve As?” </p><p>“Talk to Juyeon!” Hwall squeaked in her face. </p><p>“He found the problem…” Jinsoul drawled. “He told Haseul you were the problem.” </p><p>“What did I do?!”</p><p>“You know.” </p><p>“I really don’t!” Hwall shouted back, backing away ever so slowly down the hall before she caught on and was pinning him with her stare. </p><p>“Want to lose another pinky?” </p><p>“No!” he said holding his hands up in defense. “No, I do not! But I kind feel like you want me to!” </p><p>“Jinsoul!” Hyunjin marching out of class. “Why are you interrogating my boyfriend?!” </p><p>“Your what now?!” the fourth year’s eyes widened. </p><p>Hyunjin shrugged, the open tie hanging like a necklace around her collarbone swaying lightly as her shoulders lifted and dropped. “We bonded in the infirmary,” she said as if it were any other answer. “We’re dating now.” </p><p>“Oh my god. I hate you,” Jinsoul groaned, rubbing her temples. “And y-” she started again, looking back over to the spot Hwall had been mere moments before and finding nothing but undisturbed air. “Where did he-”</p><p>“Oh hey, Jinny!” Heejin’s head popped through the doorway with a bright smile, arm linked with the girl beside her. </p><p>The first year walked her classmate into the hall and whispered something to her before the other took off, leaving Heejin to return her attention to a confused Jinsoul and an aggravated Hyunjin. </p><p>“What are you doing here?” she asked the elder. </p><p>“Interrogating my boyfriend,” Hyunjin grumbled through clenched teeth and crossed arms.  </p><p>“That’s not why I came!” the accused girl defended. </p><p>“Then why did you come?” Heejin asked, confused, moving to stand next to Hyunjin in solidarity – for what it never needed to be specified. </p><p>Jinsoul squawked out an offended noise and emphatically gestured to the two with her upturned hands, like seeking a repentance for the unjust behavior of her juniors. There was a moment, a very aching brief moment, where Heejin thought Jinsoul would leave them be like she usually did when Heejin and Hyunjin were joined in the stubborn antics for which they were known, but… when Jinsoul’s left eye twitched, so small in the corner but it twitched, Heejin knew that wouldn’t be the case today. </p><p>“Who did it?” Jinsoul deadpanned with a sigh, the rest of the two first year’s class having filed by them through the corridor on their way elsewhere. </p><p>Heejin exchanged a glance with her friend beside her. “Did what?” </p><p>The pointed look Jinsoul gave her was sharp enough to cut through bone. “The staircase.” </p><p>“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Hyunjin answered haughtily. “I claim plausible deniability.” </p><p>“If we…” Heejin started to say and then took a second to enunciate her next word. “…theoretically…” she added very carefully, “did it before the truce was called, then would we not be in trouble?”</p><p>“If you… theoretically… filled an entire dorm staircase with tar in the middle of the night and set off the fire alarm,” Jinsoul mimicked back. “Then it wouldn’t matter when it happened.” </p><p>“Because it’s funny?” the younger sheepishly offered. </p><p>“Because skin grafting on feet really isn’t that hard?” Hyunjin tacked on. </p><p>“Because,” Jinsoul crossed her arms. “I’d be mad either way.” </p><p>“Wait,” Heejin whined. “If we… hypothetically… did this a week ago, why are you only now coming to us about it now?”</p><p>“Because I was hypothetically praying with every bone in my body it wasn’t you two idiots who did it.” </p><p>Hyunjin raised her eyebrow. “And?”</p><p>Jinsoul responded to the first year by glancing around the now virtually empty hall as if looking for support in an insanely unbalanced argument with a delusionary unstable individual. “And now I know it was you!”  </p><p>“Took you long enough,” the younger muttered under her breathe. </p><p>“I’ve been busy,” Jinsoul huffed. </p><p>“How’s your marriage?” Heejin chirped. </p><p>“My?” she wrinkled her eyebrow before the realization hit. “Oh, him. I mean I did mace him in the face.”</p><p>“So… normal?” the younger laughed. </p><p>“Yeah,” Jinsoul automatically agreed with a wave of her hand. “He’s fine. Wait. Hold on. I’m not done scolding you for the staircase.” </p><p>“That’s what you call scolding?” Hyunjin asked. “It was more of a mild annoyance than anything else and I’m being liberal with the term annoyance.” </p><p>Jinsoul’s face showed she was clearly not following the younger’s logic. “Did you want it to be worse?” </p><p>“No,” Heejin added in.  </p><p>“I mean…” her counterpart drawled. </p><p>“No!” Heejin bit at her. </p><p>“Now that I think about it,” Jinsoul tapped her chin. “I do have a little repentance you two could fulfill for me.” </p><p>“For <em>you</em>?” Hyunjin balked. “It wasn’t even <em>your</em> dorm?”</p><p>“No, but I am in charge of you,” the forth year argued.  </p><p>Hyunjin exchanged a glance with a wary Heejin in her periphery. “Are you?” she asked the elder. </p><p>“You want Yves to do your discipline?” </p><p>“No, I want Haseul,” Heejin pouted. </p><p>“Haseul is busy being in an ambiguous relationship with her stalker,” Jinsoul replied. </p><p>Heejin tilted her head in thought with a pensive distance overtaking her eyes. “Is he a stalker if its ambiguous?” she mused. </p><p>“Is it ambiguous if he’s a stalker,” Hyunjin added with a shit-eating grin.  </p><p>“Shut up!” Jinsoul cut them off. “We’re going to the foyer.” </p><p>“The foyer?” the two youngers questioned. </p><p>Jinsoul’s phone buzzed in her satchel and she swung it around to dig inside for a moment. It sat against her stomach as she rummaged, the telltale sound of clinking metal and some no doubt strewn about pens coming from the leather as her arms moved this way and that. Heejin felt a pinch at her arm and whipping her head to glare at Hyunjin who was motioning down the corridor with a nudge of her head toward the open hall silently. As she finally understood what her friend wanted and took a couple hesitant steps backward to join the retreating girl, Jinsoul was raising her head from her bag. The elder pointed at them unamused and motioned them back to her. </p><p>“Okay, I was supposed to catalogue the artwork in the front hall for Tiffany because she wants to host an auction so she can fund adding a helipad behind the engineering wing,” Jinsoul explained. “But I did not. Because, as I said before, I’ve been busy.”  </p><p>“Why did she ask you?” Hyunjin blurted. “No offense,” she added on the end.  </p><p>“It’s… a long story.” </p><p>“Okay, but why do we have to do it?” Heejin whined. “I don’t even know anything about art.” </p><p>“Because I have to take them all of the walls to assess sun damage and aging,” Jinsoul detailed with a roll of her eyes.  </p><p>“Paintings are heavy!” Hyunjin immediately groaned, shaking her shoulders a little in tantrum. </p><p>“Yeah!” Heejin parroted. “So heavy!” </p><p>“I bet it’s not really about the tar,” Hyunjin grumbled. “It’s because she cant reach any of them.” </p><p>“Foyer. Now,” Jinsoul gritted out, grabbing Hyunjin’s wrist and hauling the first year along side her, sure Heejin would follow. </p><p>The foyer was large, impossibly so. It was a giant gleaming marble rotunda littered with humongous oil paintings of landscapes and portraiture and whatnot, all adorned with the grandest, thickest frames upon gob-smackingly tall walls reaching toward a pristine dome of the bright perfect light of noon shining down on a lofty crystal chandelier. And, by the time the tenth portrait had been catalogued, taken down, assessed, put back up, and adjusted, the girls were exhausted. And bored. Who knew being forced to preform monotonous, menial manual labor by your older friend would elicit such strong feelings of ennui and disassociation? </p><p>Hyunjin was now aloft a light brown table, spindled legs supporting it above the ground and marred scars of antique age on its surface, her chunky black loafers finished with metallic silver chain dangling over the edge where she knelt. As the hook on the back of the painting, large and cumbersome, came off from the wall a horrid screeching sound erupted and the cracking shatter of a 500 pound chandelier smashing upon the marble floor echoed out. </p><p>Hyunjin flinched so abruptly she went careening off the side of the wooden banquet, picture and all, and tumbled onto the floor beneath. “HOLY SATAN ON A SIN-STICK!!!”  </p><p>Heejin stood rigid, glass spread upon the floor around her and large crystalline l’object d’art in a mangled mess a mere feet away from her. Her and Jinsoul’s tights were ripped, a thousand tiny scratches upon their legs and little hairline lines of blood traversing. She reached her hand up to feel the sting of a cut on her face from a flying, flying piece of glass and then slowly, robotically, turned to Hyunjin laying smushed against the floor under a large Weltlandschaft of a French paysage, soft beams of sunlight and dark wooded scenery. </p><p>“Who says that?!”</p><p>Hyunjin grunted and laboriously picked her head up from the marble to eye Heejin. “There’s a chandelier! On the floor!” she shouted back. </p><p>“Yeah…” Heejin nodded. “And who the fuck says sin-stick?”</p><p>“A CHANDELIER!” Hyunjin yelled. “FELL FROM THE FUCKING CEILING AND ALMOST KILLED ME!” 	</p><p>“YOU SAID SOMETHING DUMB!” Heejin threw back. “AND I FEEL COMPELLED TO POINT IT OUT TO YOU!” </p><p>“Frame: dented,” Jinsoul calmly muttered into the space, pen scribbling upon her notebook. </p><p>“How do we explain this to Tiffany?” </p><p>Jinsoul shrugged. “We don’t have to. Not my problem. I won't tell if you don't."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0028"><h2>28. When One Door Closes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Shoutout to the door on my uni campus that is labelled 'this is not a door' and is permanently sealed shut</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Okay, seriously. What the fuck is going on with you?”</p><p>A minute prior Jungeun had spotted her best friend across a crowded quad, sun and flowers and giggling masses packing the space, and thundered across the grass to face an inevitable intervention, confrontation, whatever it may be, with the girl. It had been four days, four days since Hak’s initiation party thrown by the infamous ex-quartermaster and Ju patriarch, and Yein had been avoiding her. Now, avoidance at Genius, especially when on at least one end involved with a clandestine, was a rather over-zealous affair. It wasn’t simply an aloof tendency outwardly projected when walking between classes or a cautious eye trained on throngs of passing students in the corridor, nor was it shutting communication down and scurrying into your dorm at the first sight of their face. No, Genius avoidance was something else. Hence, Jungeun was left to throw people out of her way, grabbing collars and heaving elbows and kneeing backs, and miraculously tackle her very lovely friend in the middle of the day, blazer flapping and hair flying and surprised screech to boot. </p><p>Yein stopped. Jungeun could feel the girl’s body tense under hers in a rigid paralysis of fright and anxiety. The palpable tension could have chocked her lungs if she didn’t roll off and sit into the earth with an exerted breath. A couple people stopped briefly to point and whisper over at the two girls sprawled on the earth by the cobblestone path, bags and pencils and bodies thrown everywhere. </p><p>“Was that really necessary?”</p><p>Jungeun glanced over and saw the other still flat against the lawn. “Yeah it kind of was, you loser.”</p><p>Yein didn’t answer her, choosing to stare blankly at the sky as her chest rose and fell steadily, hair splayed out around her head in a halo and kilt fanned against the grass. </p><p>“You’ve been avoiding me,” Jungeun added, gaze joining the others on the trailing fluffy clouds of a deep blue sky sitting calmly above the crenels and spiked towers of the school. </p><p>“Have I?” Yein’s voice drifted over. </p><p>“I don’t know,” Jungeun drawled. “Have you?”</p><p>When she yet again received no answer, Jungeun looked back over to the other whose eyes were now closed. </p><p>“Did I do something?” she asked. “I’m really confused. I thought that with Hak and-”</p><p>Yein’s snort halted her. </p><p>“Okay, seriously,” Jungeun spat out. “What the fuck is going on with you?” </p><p>“What the fuck is going on with you?” Yein shot up to face her.</p><p>Jungeun reeled back, still seated next to her friend, sharing the same breath and the same space as they always did. “What?”</p><p>“I just…” Yein stopped to release a charged huff. “You get a lot of things, Jungeun. When does it ever stop?”</p><p>“What are you talking about?” the other threw back, utterly lost. “I thought after Friday you’d want to be helping me nurse my goddamn wounds.” </p><p>“What wounds?” Yein blurted with an anger Jungeun had never heard her use. </p><p>“I’m so confused…”</p><p>“Yeah,” the bio-chem student laughed bitterly. “So am I.”</p><p>“I cant fix it if you don’t tell me,” Jungeun pleaded. </p><p>The offended amazement on Yein face was etched there like a classical sculpture dripping in the uniquely human emotion. “Is this a joke?” she laughed out. “Are you joking?”</p><p>The other didn’t know how to respond. She didn’t even know what was going on. One moment her eyes were flitting across the Factory grounds and the next she was shoulder deep into her friend’s stomach, pummeling her elusive body onto the lawn.</p><p>“If I cant tell you?!” she emphasized with a seething judgment. </p><p>“Yeah,” Jungeun defended. “That’s what I fucking said.” </p><p>“That’s rich coming from you, babe.” </p><p>Jungeun opened and closed her mouth wordlessly as she took a second to process the other’s words. “I am seriously not getting what’s going on right now.”</p><p>“I should have known you liked secrets.” The words fell from Yein’s mouth, the girl unable to hold them in, unable to reel them back upon her tongue where they could safely rest like a bitter aftertaste, but unsaid: a part of her wishes they remained unsaid. “They’re just another thing on the list of stuff you wanted and got because of daddy’s dirty money,” tumble outright after, tasting just as disgustingly vile as she imagined they would. </p><p>If Jungeun’s flabbergasted face was any indication, the girl was hurt, visibly and explicitly hurt. “YEIN, WHAT THE HELL?!”</p><p>The other watched her friends face morph through emotions from astonishment, to offense, to betrayal as she responded and for a second, one brief second, she was ready to apologize, and then she remembered. </p><p>“Why do you get everything?!” Yein yelled back at her friend, her best friend, the person she trusted more than anymore and knew more than she knew herself. Tears welled in her eyes and her pupils shook as they stared Jungeun down. “Why?!” </p><p>And for her part, Jungeun wavered too. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she desperate called back.  </p><p>“Bullshit, you don’t!” Yein was full on crying now, a fat tear dripping over and down the curve of her cheek to find its way in her shirt collar. </p><p>“What is this about?!” </p><p>Yein’s lip quivered and her shoulders stiffened. “Nothing!” she threw back. “It’s nothing, Jungeun.” </p><p>The other couldn’t quite place the word which itched at her brain like she knew them, like she should know them, as if they were begging her to remember. But she didn’t. She didn’t remember and she didn’t know what those words truly meant in that moment. She just knew she felt angry and attacked and confused. </p><p>“Fuck you!” </p><p>“Really??” Yein balked. “Fuck me?! Shouldn’t you be fucking someone else?!”</p><p>“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”</p><p>“WHAT? ARE YOU MAD? ARE YOU MAD BECAUSE IT’S NOT AS GOOD AS YOU HOPED IT WOULD BE?” </p><p>At this point some passerby were full on staring at the two screaming girls sat on the lawn amidst an aggressive mess of school supplies, blades of grass in their hair and uniforms unkempt untucked and wrinkled. </p><p>“Yein… I love you; you know I do,” Jungeun started once they had both remained silent, gauging each other after screaming their lungs out in public. “But you’re acting psychotic right now. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” </p><p>“Yeah, whatever princess,” the other brushed off.  </p><p>“What did I do???”</p><p>Yein paused, looking away from Jungeun and into the group of gathered classmates and students. “The same thing I did,” she answered.  </p><p>“Oh my god, this is about- Did someone say something? At the party?”</p><p>“WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE YOU SUDDENLY CARE?!”</p><p>“Yein…”</p><p>“You know where I live! You know all my friends! You could have found me if you really wanted to talk that badly so stop acting like you care!” </p><p>“What can I do?” the other asked. </p><p>“I-” Yein stopped herself and pushed up from the ground, forging her bag and all her scattered coursework. “I don’t really want to talk anymore,” she said and was walking away. </p><p>---</p><p>“Oh my god,” Sunwoo groaned. “Who the heck is being so loud in the quad right now? They’re practically screaming!” </p><p>The noise of shouts, clearly angry in intention, drifted through the cracked window like a soap opera playing on an old t.v. in the distance, static and fuzzy but the drama clear and cutting through any space between it and someone’s ears. </p><p>“Should I say something?” Jacob leaned forward and asked him in a hushed whisper appropriate for the library they were in. </p><p>“Nah,” Younghoon waved the other fourth year off with a voice not hushed and clearly not appropriate for the library they were in. “They’ll either tire themselves out or someone will get shanked.” </p><p>Jacob sighed at his respond and slumped back into his seat. “I guess you’re right.” </p><p>“I’m always right,” Younghoon chuckled. </p><p>“Are you?” Sunwoo’s skeptic question drifted over, gaining both of his older friend’s attention. “Pretty sure that’s Jacob,” he added.  </p><p>“And Jacob is my friend,” the cyber student shrugged. “So that makes me right be association.”</p><p>Jacob’s confused face turned to him. “What are talking about?”</p><p>“But so is Kevin” Sunwoo argued back. “So that would make Kevin always right.” </p><p>“Okay, I take it back.” Younghoon quickly amended.</p><p>Jacob turned to Sunwoo. “Did he just insult me?”</p><p>“No,” Sunwoo answered adamantly with a shake of his head. “No one would ever insult you. You’re an angel.” </p><p>“Yeah!” Younghoon agreed. “I insulted Kevin.” </p><p>“Poor Kevin,” Jacob pouted. </p><p>Sunwoo placed his ribcage against the arm of the other’s seat, body pressed next to Jacob’s chair as he clapped him on the back. “We’ve all been thinking that for a while now.”</p><p>“Why isn’t Kevin here?” Younghoon asked, looking to the door as if the other boy would waltz right in right then and explain himself.  </p><p>“Because,” Sunwoo drawled. “Changmin texted me that Kevin and Dong-Il are stuck behind that… weird door,” he gestured uncertainly in front of himself with circling hands as he said it, a seeping ambiguity entering his voice. “The one beneath the economics staircase that leads down to the records room?” he added, but it seemed more a question than an explanation. </p><p>“Changmin is friends with Dong-Il?” Jacob asked. </p><p>Younghoon burst out laughing as soon as Sunwoo had finished, simultaneously erupting scoffs and chuckles as the other fourth year attempted to query Sunwoo. Jacob’s and Sunwoo’s conversation played background to the uproarious noises coming from Younghoon, who apparently found the idea of the two third years incapable of mobility or escape rather hilarious. </p><p>“The other Changmin,” Sunwoo corrected Jacob. </p><p>“What other Changmin? Not our Changmin?” </p><p>Sunwoo rolled his eyes at the elder. “The one that’s friends with Dong-Il.” </p><p>“You know what…” Jacob answered. “Never mind, I’m good.”  </p><p>“They got stuck,” Younghoon chocked out between laughs. “Behind the red door,” he continued amidst his rumbling belly aching chuckles. “They’re never getting out,” he giggled out at the end before the laughter took over again.  </p><p>Sunwoo started to laugh himself, joining the fourth year cyber student before seeing Jacob’s sincerely worried expression. “Do I need to go get them out?”</p><p>“You might,” Sunwoo shrugged. 	</p><p>“How did they even get there? There’s no doorknob!” </p><p>Younghoon wiped a tear from his eye as he settled down. “I feel like you’re underestimating them.” </p><p>Jacob seemed beyond vexed as he yelled back. “I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS A REAL DOOR!”</p><p>Oddly enough there was only one other student in the library and Hongjoong’s head remained flat against the desk asleep. He flinched as Jacob’s abrupt voice rang out but continued to softly snore against his laptop screen, the keys indented small squares into his fleshy cheek. </p><p>“Did you think it was a fake door?” Younghoon questioned him. </p><p>“I don’t know, maybe!” </p><p>“Why would there be a fake door?” </p><p>“Why would there be a real door without any indication it opened or closed?” </p><p>“Well, clearly it doesn’t open,” Sunwoo snickered. </p><p>Just then, ironically so, terribly unlikely and surprisingly so, perfect almost, the door to the library swung open with a bang and Jungeun’s fury rolled inside ahead of her stomping feet, the click of her chunky heeled Mary Janes hitting the floorboards in a drum beat fit for war. She marched over to their table, slammed her hand down on the table before Sunwoo, and leaned into his face. </p><p>“Where’s Hak?!” she bit out into his face. </p><p>“I thought you guys made up…” Sunwoo said so quietly and terrified it was all but whispered.  </p><p>“We did,” she growled and then composed herself at the stunned faces with which she was met. She stood and collected her breath, smoothing her flat palms down the front of her skirt before continuing. “We did,” she amended cordially. </p><p>“Then what do you need him for?” Jacob pipped up. </p><p>“Something’s up with Yein.”</p><p>“Ah, Yein,” Younghoon mused.  </p><p>“You know something!” Jungeun accused, finger fling out and pointing at him. </p><p>“I don’t know anything. I just saw them, like weeks ago, under the dining hall. Well…” he stopped to think. “I didn’t see them together per se but I-”</p><p>“Oh, this is old news. Like I didn’t already that. I mean now,” Jungeun corrected. “I mean at the ball.” </p><p>“Yein and Hak were together at the ball?” Sunwoo asked. </p><p>“No, they weren’t!” she frustratedly explained. </p><p>“Then what’s wrong?” Jacob queried. </p><p>“That’s the point! Nothing should be wrong! But she won’t talk to me!” </p><p>“So the problem is,” Younghoon attempted to detail. “That Yein and Hak are fighting? Because they weren’t together at the ball, even though I thought they were already together and now Yein won’t talk to you because she’s mad at Haknyeon for whatever reason?” </p><p>Jungeun nodded curtly. “Yes.” </p><p>“Women are confusing,” Sunwoo muttered.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0029"><h2>29. (Mis)communication</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>This is such heavy dialogue but I figured the plating field should be set out</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Chanhee ran across entrance to the dinning hall, through one set of double door over to the other and stopped right in front of his boyfriend with a ferocious look. His dutiful partner was waiting at the entrance for him, sat against the shallow lip of the interior windows, backpack at his feet and blazer tucked under one arm hanging at the junction of his wrist and his hand which sat tucked into his pant pocket. The other looked up in alarm at the glare he was receiving. </p><p>“Answer my fucking text messages!” Chanhee chided him, slapping Changmin’s arm at each word. </p><p>Changmin glanced down at his arm and rubbed the sore spot.  “It’s been twenty minutes!” he defended. “And we were meeting anyways!” </p><p>“That doesn’t mean you can ignore me,” Chanhee pouted in his face. </p><p>“Ignore you?” Changmin probed. “I saw you an hour ago. I walked you to class!” </p><p>“And then you refused to text me about where to meet until 5 minutes ago,” Chanhee angrily whispered into the other’s chest, arms now wrapped around his middle. “I was wandering the hallways. Alone!” </p><p>Changmin looked down at the top of his boyfriend’s head with a tiny smile, hugging him back. “Can I say something to defend myself?” he asked. </p><p>“No, you may not,” Chanhee answered, picking himself up and holding out his arm. “Now hold my hand.” 	</p><p>“How’s your project going?” Changmin asked once they had sat down with their lunch, his arm swung over the back of the other’s chair, fingers brushing small circles into Chanhee’s left shoulder.  </p><p>“I’m a little stuck but I hate asking Younghoon for help,” he admitted. “I know I should give him some time because it’s the end of the year and there’s only like a month of school left.” </p><p>“Chanhee,” the other nudged him. “He’s gonna miss you too.” </p><p>“Yeah, but it’s different.” </p><p>“Because you’re not graduating with him?” Changmin’s voice came out all gentle and soft, clearly trying to coax and consul at the same time and Chanhee appreciated him for it, he did. Well, he would have if that was the problem. </p><p>“I’m a cyber major,” he sighed. “I sit next to him every single day. Don’t you think he’d rather be with everyone else?”</p><p>“I think,” Changmin mused. “I think that it means he is probably going to miss you the most.” </p><p>“I don’t know…”</p><p>“Hey,” Changmin pulled his arm down and rested it on Chanhee’s knee to get his attention. “You should talk to him.” </p><p>“Okay, maybe I will.” </p><p>“Am I forgiven?”</p><p>“Like I could ever actually be mad at you,” Chanhee smiled back. 	</p><p>Their little moment was broken when a slam echoed in the rafters of the hall, the inner door having been shouldered open violently by a very apparently inebriated ex-Quartermaster by the name of Taeyang. He was followed, or rather closely stalked, by a frazzled and incredibly over his head first year that went behind the other bowing and nodding his head in apology as the elder gracefully danced in between the table with a flourish and a flick. Taeyang spotted the two third year friends of his replacement and waltzed over with a sparkle in his eye and a spring in his step, drifting over the floorboards.   </p><p>“Are you drunk?” Chanhee blurted once the older boy had made it over, waving and acknowledging his many fans among the student body, and plopped down in the chair before them. </p><p>“Maybe…” he drawled. “Maybina…” he added with a smile, crossing his legs by a flamboyant show of one raised entirely too high and tucked over the other like a decoration.</p><p>Changmin looked down at his watch and then back at Taeyang. “It’s one o’ clock in the afternoon,” he said.  </p><p>Taeyang leaned into the chair, arm over the back and crossed legs swiveling to the side as his back gently arched. “And?”</p><p>“And it’s one o’ clock in the afternoon,” Chanhee repeated his boyfriend’s statement.  </p><p>“I can’t be held accountable for anything anymore!” Taeyang excitedly announced throwing a showman’s arm in the air. “It’s amazing!” </p><p>Hwiyoung had finally made it through the crowd, having been pulled aside by many of the so-called adoring fans imploring for gossip, and blackmail, and the ever occasional and highly suspicious genuine concern. </p><p>“How did-” Chanhee started to ask. </p><p>Hwiyoung held up his hand. “Don’t even ask me.” </p><p>“How’s my little protégé doing?” Taeyang purred. “Hasn’t been anything to settle,” he laughed. “Not since I settled him.” </p><p>“Oh my god,” Changmin groaned. “I don’t want to have to deal with this right now.”</p><p>“You?” Hwiyoung threw back. “You don’t want to deal with this?” </p><p>“Why is he here?” </p><p>Hwiyoung sighed exhaustedly. “I honestly couldn’t tell you,” the first year lamented. “He ran away and I lost sight of him for like 5 minutes ago. He’s really fast.”</p><p>“I heard my babies were fighting again!” Taeyang interrupted them. “They should know better now,” he wagged his finger. “My word is law.” </p><p>“Your word for the past hour has been 90% ‘I do what I want’,” Hwiyoung corrected him sliding into the other vacant chair at the table.</p><p>“Ha!” Taeyang erupted. “That’s 4!” </p><p>“No,” Hwiyoung cried, slamming his head on the table and rattling the china. “It’s not.” </p><p>“Why are you both sitting here?” Chanhee asked. </p><p>“Are we not allowed to sit here?” Taeyang leaned across the table, irate for some reason. “It’s a free country!”</p><p>Changmin finally lost it. “This is unclaimed territory!” </p><p>“Guess you don’t want to know about Hak and Yein and Jungeun then.” </p><p>This, of course, caught Chanhee’s attention and the younger was mimicking Taeyang’s stance, half lifted from his chair to smush his body across the dining surface, plate of food long forgotten to sit idly and cold beside his elbow. “I’m sorry what now?”</p><p>Taeyang smirked and sat back down at the other’s eagerness. “I overheard them.”</p><p>“You overheard them?” Changmin deadpanned, not believing a word. </p><p>“I saw Jungeun walking with panache and followed her.”</p><p>Changmin then turned to his boyfriend with a quirked brow. “Did he just unironically use the word panache?”</p><p>“She went to find good old baby Ju and surprise, surprise who should see them laughing through a glass divider in the clandestine library but Yein. Also,” Taeyang paused his story, finger held up to garner attention. “Isn’t it so ironic the clandestine longue of all places as a transparent room divider for the study areas? Is it supposed to be ironic?”</p><p>“Taeyang,” Hwiyoung groaned, head still resting flush with the table. “Finish the story so I can take you back to Zuho.” </p><p>“I do what I want,” the other giggled back. </p><p>“Wait! What happened?” Chanhee implored, grabbing Taeyang’s loose tie and dragging the fourth year into his face. “Tell me.” </p><p>Changmin reached over and patted the other third year’s back with a sweet “calm down, baby” that seemed to placate him. Chanhee, Hwiyoung, and Changmin were then all looking rather intently in taeyang’s direction, expecting the loose tongued boy to continue. </p><p>“What?” he asked. </p><p>“So what happened?” Changmin implored. </p><p>“Oh yeah!” the elder seemed to realize. “Anyways I heard little miss sunshine and Jeju boy talking and it was stupid and platonic and all that jazz, but then Yein showed up when they were parting and oh boy, can I just say bad timing because they were literally wrapped around each other in that overly familiar, are they family, are they dating, kind of way and it was a fucking shit show to see.” </p><p>All three younger boys were now leaned forward, aggressively focused on the fourth year as he babbled what he probably shouldn’t be babbling but was having a grand old time doing so anyways. </p><p>“Because…” Chanhee coaxed him onward. </p><p>“Because then Yein was widening her eyes like she caught two lovers in the act and gasping like a jilted widow and – oh my god,” he exclaimed. </p><p>“What?!” they all responded immediately. </p><p>“I just realized Zuho made me a Bishop’s Cap with Grand Marnier like a fucking DUMBASS. That bitch!” </p><p>“Taeyang!” Changmin scolded. “Yein.” </p><p>“Oh that poor girl,” the boy added. </p><p>“Why?!” Chanhee bellowed. </p><p>“Haknyeon’s not good at emotions, is he?” Taeyang mumbled. </p><p>Changmin snorted. “What makes you say that?”</p><p>“He didn’t answer her! What kind of idiot doesn’t answer a question like that!” </p><p>“Like what?!” Hwiyoung was now invested as well. </p><p>“Like that!” </p><p>Chanhee grit his teeth in vexation, nearly ready to bare fisted yank the hair from his scalp. “Taeyang, what did she ask him?!”</p><p>“Oh Jungeun just asked him why Yein was mad at her.” </p><p>“Yein is mad at Jungeun?” Changmin thought aloud. </p><p>“No!” Chanhee attempted to keep the story on track. “What did Yein ask Haknyeon?” </p><p>“Oh, if he liked Jungeun?” </p><p>The three other boys sat there exchanging glances, Hwiyoung no doubt having been filled in during one of his classes with Sunwoo or by Yves and Taeyang themselves, his unofficial adopted parents. </p><p>“He said yes,” Taeyang added.  </p><p>The table immediately erupted into a fervent discussion on the repercussions of Hak liking Jungeun - and/or visa-versa as Hwiyoung reminded them – throwing privacy to the wind as they debated what exactly that might mean for the school’s wellbeing. </p><p>“Oh wait, sorry,” Taeyang corrected. “He said yes he used to like her.”</p><p>“They’ve been friends for 10 years, it’s kind of natural,” Changmin mused. </p><p>“That’s what he said!” Taeyang clapped his hands and pointed at the younger. “He said  he liked Jungeun because they grew up together but that it shouldn’t matter anymore and then Yein asked if he had still liked Jungeun when they started hooking up and HE DIDN’T ANSWER! You!” he turned to Hwiyoung. “Wouldn’t you answer?!” </p><p>“I mean yeah you have to but I’m sure he had his reasons.” </p><p>“You!” Taeyang leapt from his chair and grabbed the nearest student who happened to be a wide eyed, slack jawed fourth year with golden highlights in her hair. The girl gapped at the obviously influenced ex-Quartermaster as he held her shoulders tight. “Oh Takashi, hi!” the boy chirped. “Love your hair!” </p><p>“Taeyang?” </p><p>“Would you answer someone that was your kind of, almost significant other that you had been secretly banging for months on the down low because their best friend was your arch nemesis but not really because they were actually your closest childhood friend and then the sort of partner saw you together and assumed you were dating and asked if you liked them?” </p><p>It was quiet for a moment as they all trained their eyes on the poor fourth year medical student, reeling from the information overload that had just been spat in her face. </p><p>“What?” she grappled. </p><p>Taeyang tossed her back immediately, the girl caught by her friends who all gave Taeyang an odd look. “Useless, Yuri! Useless!” he chided, returning to the others. </p><p>“STOP GRABBING PEOPLE!” Hwiyoung melodramatically shattered all the composure he held. “YOU NEED TO STOP GRABBING PEOPLE!” </p><p>“I have never heard Hwiyoung raise his voice above a whisper before,” Chanhee whispered to Changmin as the other two argued. Chanhee then faced Hwiyoung with a curious expression. "Also, he's only grabbed one person." </p><p>"You weren't outside professor Yakamura's office," the first year corrected him. </p><p>"Everybody hold on,” Changmin called out sternly and was met with three pairs of eyes. “No, not you, Yuri. You’re fine,” he waved the victimized fourth year off. “So, let me get this straight, Hak didn’t answer Yein when she asked if he still liked Jungeun?” </p><p>“…”</p><p>“Taeyang, I’m asking you.” </p><p>“Right! Yeah!” he happily replied. “No, no he did not,” he tacked on in a low disapproving voice, adamantly tossing his head side to side. “He said he used to like her and Yein asked if he was in love with her when they started their you know what and the bugger was tongue tied.” </p><p>“He says bugger now?” Changmin asked Hwiyoung. </p><p>“Went to London last year,” the younger answered. “Slips in sometimes.” </p><p>“Should have answered,” Taeyang kept rambling. “Always have to answer.” </p><p>“Is this going to be a problem?” Chanhee asked. </p><p>Changmin turned to him and placed his arm around the back of the other’s chair yet again, leaning into his side. “Considering Jungeun is the only person capable of saving Longguo, yeah.”</p><p>“Wait,” Chanhee tried to catch up. “What does Hak’s step brother have to do with any of this?” </p><p>“Oh my god you don’t know?!” Taeyang shouted excitedly. </p><p>Hwiyoung raised his hand. “I also don’t know.”</p><p>“No one expects you to know,” Chanhee waved him off not even making eye contact with the younger. </p><p>“Okay, so Jungeun ruined Longguo’s life, right?” Changmin prompted his boyfriend. </p><p>“That’s depressing but yes,” Chanhee agreed. </p><p>“And then Hak got the QM,” he continued to detail. </p><p>“Jungeun gave it to him,” Taeyang threw in as if it meant nothing more than a simple grunt of affirmation or a nodded head. </p><p>“JUNGEUN GAVE IT TO HIM?!” Changmin interrogated so loudly that the clink of stunned silver hitting china plates echoed behind the words. </p><p>“Why does that matter?” Hwiyoung asked. </p><p>“Because now my whole revenge plot thing is a bust,” Changmin said.</p><p>Chanhee looked back and forth between the two. “How could this be a revenge plot?”</p><p>“Because Jungeun messed it up in the first place and then Yein comes in and stops talking to her and Hak got the title so she lost a position and her best friend, most presumably because of Hak and then she wouldn’t ever want to fix it because she’d be petty.” </p><p>“That’s plausible.” Taeyang mused. </p><p>“EXCEPT IT’S NOT BECAUSE JUNGEUN GAVE HIM THE QM!” Changmin forcefully reminded him. </p><p>Taeyang gasp “My god, you’re right!” </p><p>“You already knew that!” Chanhee chastised. </p><p>“Wait so is it a problem?” Hwiyoung asked, completely lost. “Because if Jungeun really isn’t mad about everything because she gave it away then why wont she help Haknyeon?” </p><p>“Because now Yein hates both of them?” Chanhee tried. </p><p>“No, they were talking,” Taeyang answered. “Sunshine and Jeju are awful close now,” he added with a wink.</p><p>“I thought you said nothing happened?” Chanhee asked him. </p><p>“It didn’t,” he chuckled with a wiggle of his eyebrows.  </p><p>“And what about Yein?” the third year cyber student wondered aloud. </p><p>Changmin nodded his head with a determined look in his eyes before meeting his partner’s. “I think she’s in love with Hak.”</p><p>“God,” Hwiyoung mused. “I really gotta meet this kid.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0030"><h2>30. I Heard You Want Some Privacy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Only one more chapter left and then an epilogue scene kind of like GF had :)</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A tumbling, rumbling wind, snuck up choppy waters and an uncut mountain of stone rising from a tumultuously mischievous sea to greet moonlight faces grasped in embrace. The river of whistling trees on the edge snaking like a current so fine it danced in the sky, was there to nestle the bodies beneath it in a magic of shared serenity and love sick secrets. Out through an unlocked glass pane, and through into a sleeping void of whispers and snores and sure footed steps on soft laden grass, bare feet gracing the earth and a swishing woolen blanket dusting naked shins, Haseul made it to the cliffside. Tucked into heated arms so gentle and sweet they burned tiny fires into her heart like arrows struck clean through to find and warm her shivering core in the night’s chill, she sat against the sea. </p><p>And his jaw, all sharp and clean, waiting before her upturned face, shadowed on his neck and deep pools of darkness flitting in and flickering in the flame of a candlelight, battling the playful air. Haseul reached her hand upward to trail her fingertips against his face, ablaze beneath her touch and kissed by both the night and her gentle lips running parallel to her extended hand. He smiled as she parted from his skin and looked out again to the waves. </p><p>“Where I go without you?” she asked. </p><p>He hummed at her question. “To a beautiful place with beautiful people and beautiful things,” he said. </p><p>“But I’m already right here.” </p><p>A cold hand made its way under the back of her sweater, jolting a shiver up her spine before she relaxed into its luring, circling rub. </p><p>“I’m sorry it took me so long,” she whispered, the words falling over the cliffside and drowning into the darkened waters below. </p><p>“I don’t mind,” he confessed. “I would have waited a while.” </p><p>Haseul snorted. “You’re such a dork.” </p><p>“Don’t tell anyone,” he joked. “It’ll ruin my chic image.”  </p><p>“Juyeon, duck!” Hyunjae’s voice rang out of nowhere, startled them both and propelling Juyeon to whip around toward the sudden, offending noise which erupted from the dark cavernous void surrounding them.  </p><p>Haseul jumped in her skin and yelped as Juyeon fell forward, clutching his collarbone with a talon like grip. </p><p>“WHAT THE FUCK!?” Juyeon screamed, hand tightly pressed into the hole near his shoulder, bright red blood gushing from the broken skin, wrapped around the wooden shaft of an arrow, a <br/>stinging pain shooting into his body. “You got my fucking artery!” </p><p>The blood poured between the space between his fingers and ran down his hand, coating in a thin layer of the warm liquid. Haseul scrambled over and placed both her hands, one atop the top, over his to hold it back. Before her eyes could make out the exact shape of the shadows advancing toward them, the crunching sound of sand and rock underfoot, Taeyang sprang by them, body illuminated by the little bubble of flickering flame, straight through from the black night on one side to disappear a second later into the night once again. His figure was very closely followed by a murderous Yves who followed the same path of travel, quickly phasing into their vision and then from it again as she tumbled after the ex-Quartermaster beyond the edge of the light</p><p>“A CROSSBOW!?” Haseul shouted after the two, now invisible, figures. </p><p>A sigh came from behind her and she turned to find Jinsoul and Hyunjae lazily walking into the light, anxious glances cast down to the concave bleeding boy, groaning in pain and swaying where he sat, back and forth, dizzily. Taeyang came skidding back into the light directly beside Jinsoul a second later, and Yves body bolted up behind the perpetrator. </p><p>“Why does Taeyang have a crossbow?!” Haseul questioned once more at the four fourth years lined in a row, stiff and silent and wearing terribly guilty expressions. </p><p>“What the heck are you doing on the cliffs in the middle of the night?!” Jinsoul accused back at the girl. “It’s dark as shit man!” </p><p>“We specifically chased him out here so he wouldn’t hit anybody!” Hyunjae argued while Yves grunted and huffed as she attempted to wrestle the weapon away from Taeyang who was giddily refusing, the murderous look in her eyes completely juxtaposed to his sinful grin.  </p><p>“WHY DOES HE HAVE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?!” Haseul growled, pressing a little too harshly into Juyeon’s shoulder causing the boy to yelp and clutch at her wrists with his free hand which in turn then caused a rush of blood to come shooting through his shoulder. </p><p>“Fuck, Seul,” he groaned. </p><p>Yves sighed, straddling the laughing boy, silken pajama clad knees imprinted into the mud on either side of his torso. “He stole the old French cavalry equipment from the weapons museum.” </p><p>Haseul reeled back, clearly not expecting that as answer, although, she wondered, what exactly would have been able to explain the current situation and not surprise her. “Did you just let him??”</p><p>“NO!” Yves yelled back. “Obviously not,” she added in a bit of a taunt. “A trebuchet launched a bottle of vodka through my skylight.”</p><p>“You have a skylight?” Hyunjae asked her. </p><p>Jinsoul elbowed her obviously curious friend in the stomach. “I heard you leave by the way,” she answered Haseul. “I just ran into them.” </p><p>“You heard me?” </p><p>“She’s a terrible secret lover, huh?” Jinsoul smiled, turning to Juyeon and not finding the boy’s eyes but instead the top of his bobbing head as he bleed into his hand. </p><p>“I have no responsibilities anymore!” Taeyang chirped. </p><p>“Yes! You do!” Yves berated him, still pressing the wiggling boy down into the earth in a vice of her thighs. “You have the responsibility to not fucking get me out of bed at 2 in the morning!” </p><p>“And shoot people,” Jinsoul tacked on quietly, staring at Juyeon, who had neglected to make any sign he was alive in the last few minutes besides groan and writhe and… well, bleed.   </p><p>“I came because I love making fun of you!” Hyunjae announced, stepping forward clapping Juyeon on the back and received a glare from the boy, who was mind you, still the process of heavily and steadily losing quite a bit of blood. “And Jinsoul may or may not have made me piggy back her across the island in the dead of night because she was too tired to walk.” </p><p>“Can you not?!” Juyeon grit out, almost inaudible. </p><p>“Love you too, buddy,” Hyunjae smiled back, drawing his arm back to slap the other again before Juyeon ducked out of the way with a grunt. 	</p><p>“Is he not still bleeding out?” Haseul desperately asked them, still pushing into the boy’s shoulder as he started to slump, the weight of his body falling forward into her hand, straining her muscle to remain upright. </p><p>Hyunjae threw his hands into the air. “I told him to duck!” </p><p>“NO ONE EVER DUCKS WHEN YOU TELL THEM TO DUCK!” she scolded him. </p><p>“WELL THEY SHOULD!”</p><p>“AND IT’S FUCKING NIGHT!” Haseul added. “HOW WOULD HE KNOW WHERE IT WAS COMING FUN FROM, GENIUS?!” </p><p>“Guys…” Jinsoul’s sleep yawn laced voice alerted them and they followed her eyes to see Juyeon’s flickering closed. </p><p>“No, no. Come on, baby,” Haseul quietly coaxed, leaning into his faces so close her nose brushed his cheek. “Gotta stay awake,” she said slapping his face lightly to wake him. “Stay awake, baby.” </p><p>He slumped further forward and rolled into her lap, his chest folding over his legs and his head making a soft impact with Haseul’s body where it rested to next to him. </p><p>“Is that good?” Hyunjae asked. </p><p>Haseul stared at him expressionless. </p><p>“Okay, so no?”</p><p>“I love you,” Jinsoul told him. “But shut the fuck up.” </p><p>“Do you get to tell me what to do?” Hyunjae reeled. “You left me for dead in the woods for Christ sake.” </p><p>“So did Jungeun, and Haknyeon got over it really quick,” she quipped back at her best friend.  </p><p>“I still have the grenades,” Taeyang’s voice rang out between Yves’ reprimanding and the econ students’ bickering. </p><p>In the moment of her stunned distraction, Taeyang wrapped his legs around her waist and threw her to the side with his lips, rolling the girl over and underneath him. He then popped up and sprinted away from her, crossbow discarded in the grass beside them and quiver jostling on his back, dumping arrows out as it hit against his back with each flying step. </p><p>“You are so fucking dead!” Yves yelled out to him, chasing after him with the renewed fervor of a lioness on the hunt.</p><p>Jinsoul and Hyunjae heard a thump and turned back to find Haseul sprawled on the ground with Juyeon’s unconscious body flat on top of hers. </p><p>“Did you try to lift him?!” Jinsoul asked her, impressed. </p><p>“Maybe,” she gritted out from under the grievously injured boy. </p><p>“You never try to lift me,” Hyunjae pouted at Jinsoul</p><p>“You wanna get maced again?” </p><p>“Fair enough,” the boy acquiesced, throwing up his hands in defense and stepping toward the other conscious friend on the cliffside. “Want some help?” he directed down at her. </p><p>Haseul nodded and so he drew back his leg and promptly kick Juyeon directly in the side. The boy didn’t move. </p><p>“Well I’m shit out of ideas.” </p><p>Haseul pushed the boy off of her, roughly, sitting up and then regretting how hard she had pushed him and reaching out with a pout to smooth his hair, petting the boy’s head gently. “Poor baby.” </p><p>Hyunjae snorted. “He is <em>such</em> a baby.” </p><p>“I might go make sure Yves doesn’t accidentally mortally wound anyone out of a repressed need for vengeance again,” Jinsoul said, pointing over her shoulder at where the other two had sprinted off into the darkness. “You guys, good?”</p><p>“Yeah, we’re fine,” Haseul answered, laid into the sandy gravel beside her unconscious tryst. <br/>Hyunjae ended up lugging his friend’s lifelessly body in a fireman’s carry back to the campus with surprisingly little convincing, or maybe it was unsurprising because they were, after all, friends of a sort. </p><p>“He was never mad at you,” Haseul said about five minutes into their lantern lit walk, the flame becoming less and less necessary as the sun began to rise over the island, illuminating shadowed trees and the outline of the Factory. </p><p>“Hmm?” </p><p>“He was never mad. Just worried.”</p><p>“I know.” </p><p>“Oh.” </p><p>Hyunjae angled his body slightly toward her and gave her a look as if to say ‘Why oh?’. Juyeon’s limp body swung a bit as Hyunjae pivoted, arms swinging in the air and hand lightly knocking Haseul’s arm. </p><p>“I thought you were mad at him,” she explained. “For being mad?”</p><p>“Does it sound silly when you say it out loud?” </p><p>“Yeah,” she laughed. “It kind of does.” </p><p>“I know he cares,” Hyunjae answered her. “I know he was only being a stuck up dick because he cares too much about us and yeah, I probably shouldn’t have done some of that stuff but Hak needed it and I’ll always be there for him.” </p><p>“Juyeon was there for him too.” </p><p>Hyunjae blew out a stream of frustrated air through his teeth. “I know.”</p><p>“No,  I mean he did help. Who do you think took down all the propaganda posters? Jungeun?” </p><p>“… I assumed Jacob did? Or Younghoon? Or even Kevin?” </p><p>“It just seemed a bit too much like revenge to sit right with me,” Haseul said gently. “The family thing, the Longguo thing.” </p><p>“Well you know,” Hyunjae drawled. “The only difference between revenge and justice is how many people agree with you.” </p><p>Haseul stopped walking for a second, a brief passage from the entrance to the school’s gates, and looked at Hyunjae with a sincere expression. “That’s an awful way to look at things,” she mused.  </p><p>“Thank you,” he chuckled, readjusting Juyeon across his shoulder with a little bounce and beginning to walk again. </p><p>“You’re welcome,” she threw back with a soft smile and jogged to catch up.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0031"><h2>31. A Little Thing Called Love</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>SIKE - GUESS WHO REWROTE THIS SO JACOB AND SANGYEON COULD HAVE THEIR OWN CHAPTER :)))</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Light golden kisses of a sun worth greeting, of a day of happy happenstance, reigned in the sky with halos of gilded abundance, raining down with feather light caresses of an adoring dawn which welcomed sleepy heads and love sick eyes. Rare days, special days, awaited fortunate few and maybe, if one held out long enough, it could be granted to them too. Haknyeon had many things he loved, many people he loved, not the least of which was his step brother Longguo. The emotionless callousness he was raised on, as cold and sharp as the crystalline world surrounding him, was not a jovial granter of validation, or sincerity, or mercy. But Longguo, the second son of his father’s second marriage, had been a god-send: an additional black sheep to join him in outer pastures. Holidays were a bear trap, gold-plated and long set, where the heads of the family spent hours watching and waiting for fumbles and blunders and weak vulnerable words to slip out from guarded lips and heavily weighted tongues. Haknyeon had never been good at it, but he learned to be. Longguo taught him how. </p><p>And maybe he wasn’t supposed to wake up happy this morning, to rouse from a dead slumber and find himself blinking awake to a day he did not resent, the first in a while, which welcomed him into a light that graced his face and fell bowing at his feet. But maybe he was. Maybe he was supposed to find that morning more forgiving than the others. Because, as he kicked off the drowsy confines of a bed sheet, and sat up from his cocooning mattress, cataloguing a snoozing Chanhee held tight around a pillow, Hak received a call. </p><p>“It’s 6 am…” he drowned into the phone. </p><p>“I fixed it.” </p><p>It was Jungeun. Unmistakably Jungeun’s voice on the other end of the line. One Hak knew quite well from years upon years of having her as his one and only confidant. Numberless phone calls and messages sent while taking refuge in spacious bathrooms and hidden coat closets, from barreling limos between airports and careening snowmobiles on the mountains of Gstaad. It was Jungeun. </p><p>“Fixed what?” he yawned. </p><p>“Longguo.” </p><p>His heart stopped. The sheets slight itch on his bar legs was overly sensitive. The light making its way through the crack in the curtain tickled his body where it touched his arms resting above the covers. He registered Chanhee’s shallow breathes escaping from the bed across the room, making its way over amidst the distant screech of bird calls. He stopped and breathed.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I took care of it,” she answered. “I called in a tip on the police investigation and botched all the evidence they had in lock up. The court is reopening the case on probable cause of tampered evidence and he gets a retiral.” </p><p>“He gets a retrial…” Hak breathed out, mesmerized. </p><p>“And,” she drawled happily. “I know a few judges. Well, I don’t know the judges, but the family does. Kind of helpful when you’re technically culpable of war crimes.”</p><p>“Jung…” </p><p>“I should be a fixer,” she chirped. “I’m pretty good at this stuff. Maybe it’s all those legal shows I’ve been watching lately. I have a lot of free time when I’m not trying to make your life a living hell.” </p><p>“I – I don’t know what to say.” </p><p>She laughed, all carefree and cheerful, the same laugh she used to chime jumping into mud puddles and off of pool house roofs. “Thank you?” she offered. </p><p>“Jung,” he told her. “I’m serious. This… it means a lot to me.” </p><p>“You’re welcome,” she laughed into the phone. </p><p>“No, I- I don’t think I can ever make it up to you. Honestly.” </p><p>“I did it in the first place,” she reminded him. “The least I could do was make it better.” There was a moments pause in between this and the next words. “I was wrong,” she said. “I’m not used to saying it and maybe I’ll only ever say it to you, but I was wrong.” </p><p>“It’s a weird feeling, isn’t it,” he mused. </p><p>“Yeah. Still getting used to it.” </p><p>Chanhee sighed and rolled over in his bed, nestling further into the blankets and dragging his pillow with him, arms still staunchly wrapped around its cushion. Hak glanced at his roommate before settling back down into his own bed, phone against his ear and arms around his knees. </p><p>“Jung?” he whispered into the phone. </p><p>“Mmmm?” she hummed in response. </p><p>“Thanks.” </p><p>“Don’t get used to it,” she said and he could practically hear the smile. “Go bacs alto bed, Haknyeon. It’s all going to be fine.”</p><p>Hak groggily came to meet the light once again and glanced at the clock beside him which unfortunately remained black, no flashing numbers and no nothing. He ransacked his sheets for his phone before turning it on, registering and cursing at the time, and vaulting an idly stiff body from his bed. </p><p>“Chanhee!” he called to his sleeping roommate who merely rolled over with a soft sigh.</p><p>Hak marched over, practically throwing his torso on the other’s mattress to extend an arm out across the sheets. He grabbed Chanhee’s shoulder and shook the boy violently. <br/>“Dude, it’s 9!” </p><p>Chanhee jackknifed up, smacking Haknyeon in the face with his flailing arm. “Shit!”</p><p>“Yeah!” </p><p>The elder’s eyes widened. “You have Mr. Rocha’s class! Go!” he shouted, shooing Hak toward the door. “Go!” </p><p>After shrugging on his khakis and an open white button up over his shoulder he grabbed his blazer and threw it into his bag. The boy was out the door a second later and bounding down the dorm staircase with thunderous footsteps, hands brushing against the tall banister as a guide to his gravity propelled body. He ran smack into a body around the curve of the south tower which crept up near the base of the stairs. His hands reached out to grab onto the figure’s shoulders to steady both them and himself. </p><p>A surprised “Hak!” drifted up to meet him. </p><p>“Oh,” he breathed down at a tiny, frazzled Yein, her hair’s gentle highlights shinning a slight amber in the morning sun drifting through the windows. “I-yeah,” he caught himself. “Hi?” </p><p>“I was looking for you!”</p><p>He furrowed his brow and shifted his weight onto his left leg, leaning into the bannister. “I thought were mad at me?”</p><p>“I’m not,” she answered quickly. “I was, but I’m not anymore.”</p><p>“What did I do?” he asked: curious, wondering, confused. “Why did you start ignoring me, Jungeun and I both?” </p><p>Fidgeting fingers clasped in front of her wrung round and round in a twiddle before she mustered up the courage to answer. “It’s complicated I guess.”</p><p>“Yein, I’m late for class and if you don’t have anything to-”</p><p>She cut him off by grabbing his hand out of nowhere, lacing their fingers like a habit, which at one point it had been. She tugged him down a step with an anxious smile, and then two. </p><p>“Yein, I have class,” he reminded her, still stumbling down the stairs by her tight grasp and not attempting, not even a little, to pull away. </p><p>“Can you come with me?” she asked, pausing for a second. </p><p>Hak nodded his head silently, not bothering to find a voice he knew might come out shaky or uncertain or even exhaustedly distracted. He didn’t want to do that to her. she seemed so unbelievably fragile in that moment. Granted, he had no idea why. Yein was… she was a strong woman. Not a single girl at Genius wasn’t, but she was gracefully strong, magnanimously strong, gentle and strong. </p><p>She took his nod and led him down the rest of the staircase, Haknyeon’s nervous eye finding the mounted wall clock and then flitting away once he registered the numbers. Yein felt him falter as his feet met the ground of the first floor. </p><p>“Hak?”</p><p>“I’m coming. I’m right here,” he said. And he really didn’t mind it all that much. </p><p>She dragged him to around the bend of the staircase and towards an antique, unused chaise which sat against the wall next to a coat closet which more often than not acted as a luxury lost and found. </p><p>“I.. um…”</p><p>“Yein,” Hak muttered softly, grabbing her other hand to hold them both as they stood toe to toe, Yein tilting her head up to meet his eyes. “Will you tell me what I did? What Jungeun did?” </p><p>Yein sighed. “I talked to her. She told me I was stupid.” </p><p>“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure she didn’t-”</p><p>“No, no,” Yein cut in. “I was…being stupid.” </p><p>“Can I ask why?”</p><p>“Why she said it or why I was being stupid?” </p><p>“Can you just tell me both. I really don’t like secrets.” </p><p>Yein barked out a habitual laugh before her eyes widened and she grabbed one hand away from him to clutch her mouth closed. “Sorry.” <br/>Before Haknyeon could respond, Chanhee skipping over to the curve of the hallway and winked once he caught Hak’s eyes which had drifted over to the clicking noise of the other’s shoes on the floorboards. </p><p>“Go away!” Hak chided him. “This is private!” </p><p>“Not so private when you’re in the fucking foyer, loser,” Chanhee grinned good-naturedly.  </p><p>“Oh my god, go!” Hak scolded him again, bending down to throw the pillow from the chaise at him. </p><p>“Ah, okay, okay,” the elder boy laughed, swatting it away from his head to thump soundlessly on the floor. </p><p>When Hak returned his gaze to Yein, she was blushing furiously. He looked about and decided to pull her into the closer, hand still clutching hers, and slammed the door behind them. They were met with a deadly silent, dark space, bumping into a couple of polo mallets resting against the wall in lazy lean which clattered to the floor as Hak stepped back to give her room. Yein found herself stepping on the toe of some muddy riding boots just inside the door and rocking forward slightly into Hak’s arms, for the second time that morning. </p><p>“Hi,” Hak breathed in her ear. </p><p>“I love all the things you’re not,” she blurted.  </p><p>Even without anything other than the faint light seeping under the door frame, she could see his features before her, scrunched in confusion. “Yein, what are you-”</p><p>“I love that you aren’t arrogant and when you make decisions you have to talk them through with any ear who will listen,” she said into the silence between them, hands on his chest and hers wrapped about her waist in the subtlest of embraces. “And I love that you aren’t fearless because you know what you care about and what they mean to you,” she continued softly. “I love that you’re not selfish or cold or too confident to find a shoulder when you need one. I love you for all the things you refuse to be because you know better and you know your own heart.”</p><p>“You love me?” he asked. </p><p>Yein looked him directly in the eyes, reaching a hand up to cup his stunned face where his cheek fit in the soft fleshy arc of her palm. “I love you because you’re you and I don’t need another reason why.” </p><p>“I’m not worth it,” he mumbled back, almost subconsciously she thought. </p><p>“No,” Yein insisted. “You’re more worth it than anything.” </p><p>“There’s nothing there to love,” he murmured, arms tightening around her figure as if he feared she might leave, might realize. </p><p>“That’s not true.” </p><p>“Who ever said I wasn’t allowed to give you all the best parts of myself until there was nothing left?” he asked. </p><p>“I-”</p><p>“I don’t think I’d be mad if I turned out I had given my youth to you,” Hak said and then shook his head to rid of the words. “I’d never be mad,” he corrected, “because you’re the only person I’d ever want to give it to.” </p><p>“I’m supposed to say that,” she smiled. </p><p>Hak forgot all about his class and the time and the panicked roommate he had just moments before left upstairs. He stood there with Yein and felt, for the first time in a while, a pure unadulterated happiness and comfort surrounding him. </p><p>“The Midnight Folk,” he announced suddenly and was met with her blank, questioning face. “My favorite book when I was little,” he explained. “There was a talking black cat named Nibbons. On my 12th birthday my brother tracked down a first edition, signed and the whole deal. I still have it. It’s on my desk actually,” he laughed. “I loved that book. I still love that book.”<br/>She smiled wide and bright and just for him. “And how do you like your coffee?” </p><p>“Any way you give it to me,” he said.  </p><p>“I missed you.” </p><p>“You just missed my-”</p><p>“No!” she shouted at him, slapping his chest with a wide smile and twinkling eyes. “Inappropriate, Mr. Ju!” </p><p>“How’d you know what I was going to say?” he teased. </p><p>“Shut up!” she laughed into his face.  “Go to class.”</p><p>“No,” he smiled. “I don’t wanna anymore.” </p><p>“Hak!”</p><p>“Nope,” he settled into her body, backing the girl against the wall, over the boots and the fallen mallets and what felt like skies his shoulder brushed past a stiff board. “No class for me,” he breathed into her ear once they hit the wall. “I’m good right here.” <br/>“Haknyeon!” Yein attempted to scold him and ended up in a fit of giggles as he tickled her neck with tiny kisses. “Stop it!” </p><p>Their eyes stung as the door swung open, a bright harsh light filtering in and attacking them. Hak blinked into the stream and noticed Sunwoo standing there, stiff and rigid, mouth hanging open and eyes unblinking. The young first year quickly averted his gaze and threw it down to the floor. </p><p>“I don’t even want to know,” he said.  </p><p>“Sun, we weren’t-” Hak started and the door slammed shut a second later.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0032"><h2>32. The Prodigal Son Returns</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Here's the second part of the old chapter but now it's own chapter becuase that's what Sangyeon and Jacob deserve</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jacob’s head popped out the window, framed with deep yellow curtains and a starkly white grin, the hood of his sweatshirt bunched around his neck in a cocoon of soft navy fabric. </p><p>“Hey Bermuda!” he yelled out the window with a snicker, watching three heads whip around with the utmost horrified expression that even he, on the third floor, could make it out, as they found the boy leaning out past the wall of the dorm.  </p><p>“Will you ever let us live that down!” Juyeon screeched, throwing his arms into the air with such vigor he stumbled back a few steps. </p><p>“It was one time!” Hyunjae yelled back at Jacob, hand extended to flip Jacob off with his jaw hanging open in offense, stunned. </p><p>Younghoon just looked defeated, frantically turning his head this way and that looking to see who had heard the boy’s outburst. When his eyes returned to Jacob, his shoulders slumped and he called out an aggravated, “Seriously, dude?!” </p><p>Jacob burst out laughing in the window sill, leaning forward as his stomach muscles contracted. The three boys on the ground continued to hurl their annoyance up at him, curses and exclamations filling the air. As he stuck a hand down to settle it on the ledge in an attempt to catch his balance, his fingers brushed against the side of the building and then met nothing but air. His chest immediately pitched over the sill and toward the open space before the window. </p><p>“OH MY GOD, JACOB!” Younghoon screamed. </p><p>The poor boy threw out his arms in an effort to grab onto anything and he managed to wrap one hand around the curtain, body twisting so his back was towards the earth as he faced the sky, barely teetering precariously on the edge of the ledge. </p><p>“YOU FUCKER, DON’T’ YOU DARE FALL!” He didn’t need to look up to know that one came curtesy of Hyunjae. </p><p>Once he had righted himself, a bit of brick dust dusting his palm he rearranged his hair and then shot them all a wink. Juyeon made a brief second of eye contact with him and just shook his head slowly, turned away to leave and no doubt muttering to himself about the ordeal. </p><p>“JACOB, YOU CAN’T DO THAT TO ME!” Juyeon yelled. “I ALMOST HAD A HEART ATTACK!” </p><p>“IT’S NOT LIKE I MEANT TO!” Jacob shouted back. </p><p>“IF YOU DON’T CLOSE THAT WINDOW RIGHT NOW,” Hyunjae warned. “I AM GOING TO PUSH YOU OUT OF IT!” </p><p>Younghoon slapped the other on the back of the head as Jacob called back, “Wouldn’t that be counterproductive?!” </p><p>Younghoon and Hyunjae then began to argue before the latter noticed Juyeon had wandered off and took off across the expanse toward his retreating back. Younghoon turned back to Jacob at the window with a tired look and opened his mouth. Before he got anything out Jacob was startling at the noise of a knock on his door and flinging himself back into the room. He popped his head back out into the waning daylight. </p><p>“Someone’s at the door!” he told Younghoon. </p><p>The other fourth year waved him off and jogged toward where Hyunjae now had Juyeon in a head lock and was rubbing the younger’s hair frantically. Jacob bounded across his room, discarded robe from the morning littering the floor, a blazer sleeve trailing on the ground near it from where it hung off the back of his desk chair. The boy jumped over the clothing and flung open the door not quite ready for what he found there: Sangyeon, all bright and handsome and just… there, physically there. </p><p>“Hey, stranger,” the elder charmed with an easy smirk Jacob had missed more than anything and all the same wanted viscerally to slap right off Sangyeon’s face every time he saw it. and then it fell as the elder’s eyes dropped down to Jacob’s chest. “Hold on…” he realized. “That’s my favorite hoodie.” </p><p>Jacob raised his eyebrow with a mischievous smile. “Is it?”</p><p>“Yes,” Sangyeon argued. “It is.”</p><p>“But is it?” the younger continued to tease, leaning into the wedged open door with a languid melting motion.</p><p>“Yeah! I’ve been looking for everywhere!” Sangyeon explained. “I can’t believe you had it this whole time!”</p><p>The soft laughter escaping Jacob’s lips brought him down from whatever chastisement was resting on his tongue and he melted at the sound. </p><p>“This is not how I wanted to do this,” Sangyeon admitted, running his tongue over his lower lip nervously. </p><p>“You didn’t tell me you were coming back for a visit,” Jacob said.  </p><p>“I didn’t really know either until I found myself on a plane… and then a car… and then a boat.”</p><p>Jacob started to laugh again but Sangyeon could tell the fourth year was desperately trying not to let the sound escape his body, a fruitless effort to save any shred of dignity the elder had manage to drag to the doorway. </p><p>“I missed you, okay,” Sangyeon admitted. </p><p>“Just me?”</p><p>“Everyone.”</p><p>“Liar,” Jacob’s easy smile met his words. </p><p>“Yeah.” </p><p>They stood there a moment, just existing together in the same space like they had many times before, so many times their friends used to joke they always breathed the same air, inhaling each other like far gone addicts looking for a fix. And maybe it had been a bit like that, addicted to each other’s company. But now, after graduation, it had been a long stretched and enduring withdrawal. </p><p>It was easy together, so easy. Or it had been. It has been no more than subconscious murmurs in one’s sleep or footsteps down a hallway your body memorized after passing through it on enough occasion’s to constitute a lifetime. It wasn’t now, it wasn’t now yet that easy. But it could be, it would be. </p><p>“So… would you like to come in?” Jacob nervously offered, having stepped back from the door to motion into the space behind him. </p><p>“Thought you’d never ask,” Sangyeon grinned back, dropping his duffel at the open floor inside Jacob’s door. He paused and turned to the younger. “You got any more of my hoodies?” </p><p>“That’s for me to know,” Jacob said pointing at himself, “and you to never find out,” he added pointing at Sangyeon.  </p><p>“Keep it. It looks good on you.” </p><p>“Doesn’t everything?” Jacob teased, completely jokingly. </p><p>“You look good in anything you put on,” Sangyeon answered, completely serious. </p><p>Jacob nervously coughed and started to back up into the room, door dragging on the tips of his fingers as it pulled away slowly. “So, uh, come in?” </p><p>“I like what you did with Chan’s old room,” he nodded appreciatively as he glanced about. “You still got the…?” he asked, gesturing to a loose wooden panel beside the fireplace. Sangyeon walked over and tapped it on the left bottom corner with the hell of his hand and it sprung open revealing a slew of passports from assorted countries. “Planning a trip?” he laughed.  </p><p>“No, it’s a grad gift. From Hyunjae.” </p><p>“Hmmm.” </p><p>Jacob wandering to his window, swiping the curtain where they danced on the wind to lean forward and draw the clasp shut and locked. He turned to find Sangyeon staring at his wall of photos, of one in particular, a little worn around the edges and sun-faded from years of display. It was a photo of them Jacob’s first and Sangyeon’s second year, arms locked around each other shoulders, chest to chest, bodies plastered together like life preservers after a plane crash in the middle of an ocean. Sometimes, that’s what being with Sangyeon had felt like. </p><p>“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Jacob asked. </p><p>“I wanted to surprise you,” the other said, setting his light jacket on a desk as he walked by it.  </p><p>“And you calling me to tell me you were finally coming back wouldn’t have been enough?”</p><p>Sangyeon shrugged. “I thought you already knew I was bad at critical thinking?”</p><p>“I didn’t think it was this bad,” Jacob chuckled, falling flat onto his bed and feeling the mattress dip as Sangyeon slowly sat down next to him. </p><p>“How is work?”</p><p>“It’s nice.” </p><p>Jacob silently rolled toward where Sangyeon sat, propped himself up on his elbows, and gave the elder a knowing look. </p><p>“It’s nice, I swear!” Sangyeon defended, holding his hands up before him in a blocking plea. “I just… it’s not the Factory. And they told us there was a great big world out there and that it was ours for the taking, which, it was - very much so – but it’s not Genius.” </p><p>“It’s because I’m not there,” Jacob mused, settling back down as Sangyeon’s soft gaze still traced his face. </p><p>“Yeah,” the elder breathed. “Maybe so.”</p><p>Sangyeon finally fell down onto his back with a gentle thud as he landed beside the fourth year. “How are the kids?” he asked, studying the ceiling, hands folded across his chest. </p><p>“How are you?” Jacob countered.  </p><p>“Bae,” he glanced over at the boy in his periphery. “I’m fine; I promise. I came to see you because I wanted to.” </p><p>“So nothing happened?” </p><p>“No. I just missed you,” Sangyeon answered again. “Am I not allowed to miss my-” his voiced trailed off at the end, caught on his tongue. “You,” he decided. “Am I not allowed to miss you?” </p><p>“Your you,” Jacob giggled lightly. “Your me?” </p><p>“My you,” Sangyeon smiled back deliriously, reminded in that moment of their nonsensical conversations aided by sleep-deprivation and expensive liquor and comfy warm beds shared between… friends. </p><p>“You know you have me smiling at nothing,” Jacob confessed after a moment. </p><p>Sangyeon didn’t answer, the gentle and fragile hesitation he held in his palms threating to spill words between them he was afraid to loose. </p><p>“At empty walls and hardwood floors,” Jacob continued. “At pages of words I’m not really reading, I find myself smiling.”<br/>Sangyeon’s eyes slipped down to the floor at his feet for a moment before they flickered back up to ones he knew so well that they often filled his head more than any other sight. “Because of me?” he asked. </p><p>“Because of you,” Jacob repeated.</p><p>Sangyeon smiled. “Because of you too,” he said after a beat, not meeting Jacob’s eyes but looking past the boy into his/ room. </p><p>“What?”</p><p>The other’s eyes finally met Jacob’s again and there was something so beautifully vulnerable in them. “I came back because of you.” </p><p>“I know.” </p><p>“I almost fell out of the winder earlier,” Jacob tacked on, more of a thought which escaped the better judgment of a filter and somehow manifested itself on a pure willpower to be heard. </p><p>“JACOB!” Sangyeon chastised him. </p><p>“But I didn’t!” he shouted back. “Almost! I said Almost!”  </p><p>"What the hell have you been up to without me?" </p><p>"Oh, just a whole load of trouble," the younger joked and then his face fell. "I thought you'd come back sooner," he murmured. </p><p>"I couldn't."</p><p>"Why?"</p><p>"Because I needed to work up the courage to do this," Sangyeon almost whispered, leaning closer and closer to the other's face, arm extended over Jacob's torso to brace against the bed at his shoulder. </p><p>Jacob screwed his eyes shut as Sangyeon approached him, tensing his facial muscles and balling his hands into the sheet at his sides and then he felt a wet peck on his forward and sprung open his gaze to find Sangyeon's wide grin right there before him. </p><p>"Sangyeon!" Jacob yelled at him. </p><p>"Yes?" </p><p>"I thought you were going to-"</p><p>Jacob was cut off by the elder's lips pressed against his, Sangyeon's comforting hand having snaked under his head to cradle his neck as he kissed him. </p><p>"Thought I was going to what?" he teased. </p><p>"You're lucky I like you," Jacob said. </p><p>"Oh, I'm very lucky," Sangyeon replied and leaned down once again.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0033"><h2>33. Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Okay maybe I added a bonus last chapter and an epilogue because i didnt want to end this but well... here we are my friends </p><p>Also, no shade to whoever the real Norwegian ambassador to Singapore is. I'm sure you’re doing great buddy 😊</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>A proposal: someone had made a proposal and a rather lucrative one. A shifty looking charmer behind a deep purple velvet curtain in the back of a club in Prague, just dripping in money in his silken black suit as he longue on the chaise with a hand around the bubbling stem of a champagne glass. And the reason they were even in the night club in the first place, by some or other name and a rather liberally guarded exclusive secret just flounced about when one’s tongue was too married to absinthe to care for the words it rattled off, well the reason they ended up in this particular club was because Yves was notoriously evasive, even intoxicated, and Hyunjae was a dutiful babysitter. Yves saw a backdoor open by the hand of a man in tails and the next second she was not waltzing unsteadily beside Hyunjae on the cobblestone for their yearly spring retreating to the old European bachelor tour route but sprinting, amazingly so considering she should by no means have any semblance of balance in her six-inch heels, across the narrow back street to investigate.</p><p>
And honestly, who was Yves to say no to a job, especially one offered her in a wannabe clandestine debauchery center which made her feel right at home. Hyunjae had then begrudgingly agreed to sign his signature away, a manufactured alias of course, when Yves was breathing down his neck about how wonderful it would be to put on their resume. And she had a point. She usually did, Hyunjae admitted. But as Yves saw the deep set wrinkles so cavernous they looked like ravines; she was beginning to question it. </p><p>“Oh, hell no.” </p><p>“Get in the car,” Hyunjae deadpanned at her, blocking her from exiting the vehicle, pristinely shone Armani dress shoes blocking her direction of intended travel. </p><p>“He’s old,” she argued, attempting to lift from the leather cushion of the seat only to be pushed back down again with a hand on her bare shoulder. </p><p>“2 and a half Mil, Yves. 2 and a half Mil.” </p><p>“It’s not like we really need it,” she groaned, slapping his hand away, fingernails grazing the metal of his watch with a faint clink. </p><p>“Mr. Ford…”</p><p>“He’s not a real Ford,” she grumbled, crossing her legs at the fold of a dainty silk skirt which tickled her upper thighs. “He didn’t brag about Le Mans. They <em>all</em> brag about Le Mans. Trust me, I know them all.” </p><p>“Mr. Ford,” Hyunjae repeated with a pointed eyebrow lifted up to a clouded darkening sky clearly indicative of rain, “gave us a good deal. It’s good experience and you know it.” </p><p>“But he’s old,” she whined back. </p><p>“He’s not <em>that</em> old.” </p><p>Yves thrust out the folder containing the photograph so swiftly that it plunged into Hyunjae’s impeccably dressed gut. She smiled tauntingly up at him as he opened it and immediately cringed. </p><p>“It could be worse,” he tried to console her. </p><p>“No,” she argued. “No, it couldn’t be.” </p><p>Hyunjae huffed out exasperatedly and tucked the folder under his tux covered arm. “At least there’ll be good wine,” he tried again.  </p><p>“It’s Norway,” Yves deadpanned. “They know jack shit about wine.” </p><p>“Technically… it’s Singapore.” </p><p>Yves crossed her arms and pouted up at the suavely dressed boy, a glaring desperate childish move which she only ever employed when she very, adamantly, wholly and completely, refused to do something for her health and wellbeing. Or for her own sanity. </p><p>“We’re going,” Hyunjae sternly decided. “Now move over,” he shooed her across the seat, ducking his head into the town car and settling next to an angry, beautiful woman; Oh, how he loathed angry, beautiful women. </p><p>And Yves was right. Once they were ushered through the embassy doors by a tall, thin woman in a gold, glittering dress and through not two but three sets of double doors, all bullet proof glass and iron ornamented frames, the ballroom sat before them. There at the end of the room, stood against a mirrored wall chatting a girl much too young his age to be of any prospects, there he stood, the Norwegian ambassador. </p><p>“Oh my god,” Yves groaned with a half a mind to stamp her feet. “He looks half dead already!” </p><p>“Easier to schmooze.” </p><p>“No one who respects themselves says schmooze.”</p><p>“No one who respects themselves flirts with a nearly dying man for his fingerprints because they need them to please another man posing as a Ford in a possibly haunted night club.” </p><p>Yves narrowed her eyes. “I thought you wanted me to help you.”</p><p>“Help you?! You’re the one agree to it! It’s me who’s helping you.” </p><p>“You call this helping?”</p><p>Hyunjae secretly raised his arms behind her back, making a move to wrap a hand about her waist as would have been more proper decorum given their setting than what he actually did, which was to squarely place his palms against her back and push. Yves whipped around with a glare accentuated by her thick black cat eye - not that she needed the help. And so, off she went to… ‘schmooze’ the poor old geezer who through, no doubt nepotism and general under the table donations, had been granted the government’s social network title crème de la crème: ambassador. That was honestly how everybody got it though, Yves thought. Diplomacy was one big popularity contest. She would know; she was a diplomat’s daughter. </p><p>“Oh, I do dare to say we haven’t met before,” a meaty face entered her vision as she waltzed passed the ambassador with a drink in hand, each step she took ridding the little yellow silken dress higher on her toned legs. </p><p>And she wouldn’t say scantily clad. No, <em>she</em> would never say scantily clad. Hyunjae would. He had said it the moment she stepped out of the bathroom, ready for the party, and she had socked him in the shoulder with perhaps more force than necessary but it placated her. Hyunjae hadn’t said anything about it. He hated angry, beautiful women. </p><p>“It’s wonderful to meet you,” she smiled a perfect smile his direction which practically melted the man. “Ambassador,” she added on the end, all breathy and terribly inappropriate for a public occasion such as this. </p><p>He bowed his neck to kiss her extended hand with chapped and much to warm lips. “Would you care to discuss the matters of the world with me, dear?” </p><p>“Oh the world should rather have to discuss the matter of me,” Yves laughed, but she meant it. “But I really would love if you have me a tour of your impressive embassy? If you have the time, of course.”</p><p>“Impressive?” the man mulled over the word. “You haven’t been to UAE’s I see.” </p><p>“It’s all… rather new and exciting,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “But I understood if such an important man doesn’t have time for the likes of me.” </p><p>“Oh,” he finally caught on. “Would you prefer a more private conversation?” </p><p>“Dear Ambassador,” Yves purred. “I’d love one.” </p><p>As they exited the room, har hand tucked in the curve of his elbow, she shot Hyunjae a look over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out. The boy dramatically pulled an affronted face and then saluted her. Yves rolled her eyes and returned to nodding her pretty head at whatever the man beside her was rambling about. </p><p>He took her first to the space across from the ballroom, nodding at the guard inside who was standing next to a couple file cabinets and desk top computers blinking in the night. He had then escorted her through to the gallery, a long hallway with skylights and priceless sculptures - all harsh and experimental and very… Norwegian - the stone and metal pieces juxtaposing the warm red walls. </p><p>“…And this is where I keep my private collection,” the man drawled as they entered what appeared to be the embassy library, all dark oak and heavy set sofas. </p><p>Yves attempted not to gag and run from the scene as her delicate hand, laced with a diamond bracelet, was led into the room. He shut the door behind her and placed a heavy hand on her shoulder and that was the last of her patience. She spun around and kneed him directly in the groin. As he doubled over in pain she grabbed the back of his head, fisting his hair in a vice grip, and held it there as she brought her knee up to make contact with his face. The man fell forward with a yelp and she kicked, stiletto heel and all, straight into his spin, propelling his fat body down into the carpet. He lay there still, unconscious.  A knock sounded from the door, the sound of rapping knuckles, and she panicked. This was how Hyunjae found her laboriously stuffing an ambassador’s body into a secret study, failing miserably and instead attempting to remain upright under the large limp man. </p><p>“Did you get the fingerprints?” he asked, taking it all in very slowly. </p><p>“Yes, I got the fucking fingerprints,” she bit back. “Now help me.” </p><p>“Wait,” Hyunjae said, holding up a finger and fishing in his pocket. He produced a sleek black phone and held it aloft. “Say cheese,” he mocked the girl. </p><p>“Jae, I swear to god.” </p><p>He then walked over, satisfied, and grabbed the man out of her struggling arms. As the ambassador’s face came into view he cringed. </p><p>“See!” Yves hissed at him. “I told you he was old.” </p><p>“No,” Hyunjae said. “I think you broke his nose.”</p><p>“He deserved it.”</p><p>“For?”</p><p>“Existing?” </p><p>Hyunjae was about to respond when the sound of stampeding footfalls echoed into the room, causing both kids to stop cold in their tracks, still cradling the large body between them. “Quick, get him in the closet,” he said instead. </p><p>“That’s what I was trying to do,” Yves groaned as she hefted the body up and towards the open cupboard. </p><p>The doorknob rattled and Yves used one last burst of energy to shove the figure forward and into the closet, but the force she expelled was a little too vigorous and the man was pitching forward out of Hyunjae’s awed arms and slack jawed face and hitting the back of the closet with a resounding clang to then tumble back and back and back until Yves was on the floor under the unconscious Norwegian Ambassador to Singapore. </p><p>Hyunjae knelt and grabbed Yves out from under the man as the door burst open to at least five very angry looking embassy guards. </p><p>“Window?” he asked, holding out his hand to her. </p><p>“Window,” Yves nodded back and through it they went.  </p><p>The courtyard was empty of party goers, thank god. For if there had been a bit of outdoor reverie they would have seen two kids vaulting from the Ambassador’s private study across the open air and onto the parallel running roof. </p><p>“What’s the fucking exit route?” She screamed at him, one heel having broken off and causing her to pause and yank the other from her foot, shaking the broken glass from her hair.</p><p>“There is no exit route!” Hyunjae yelled back, thundering across the roof. </p><p>“What do you mean there’s no exit route?!” </p><p>Hyunjae stopped for a second and clutched the girl’s shoulders. “I didn’t think we’d need one,” he admitted. </p><p>“You absolute fucking imbecile!” Yves spat in his face, a thin stream of blood falling down her bare shivering arm from a cut on the inside of her forearm. “Great!” she yelled once she saw it. “Now I’m going to have to wear those stupid debutant gloves when we go to state dinners! Thanks a lot!” </p><p>“You don’t have to wear them.” </p><p>“Oh, yes I do.” </p><p>“I SEE THEM!” A voice called out and their heads turned in sync to find a guard crawling from a roof hatch and shouting into his walkie-talkie. </p><p>“Yves,” Hyunjae said slowly as he held her. “Do you trust me?” </p><p>“No.” </p><p>And he pushed her off the guard tower. </p><p>Once it has settled down and they had made their way into the denser grove of trees near the embassy, debauched clothing torn and dirtied and bloodies, Hyunjae turned to Yves. </p><p>“If it makes you feel better I have property in Norway I have to sell now, because I’m pretty sure they don’t want me anymore.” </p><p>Yves merely turned to him in the dark wood and slapped the boy across the face wordlessly before settling back against the bark of a tree to wait out the inevitable man hunt. </p><p>Hyunjae flexed his jaw with a wince. “Mr. Ford isn’t going to be happy.” </p><p>“HE’S NOT EVEN A REAL FORD!”</p>
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